David Aitken

Old_Airman wrote: > commanders make HUGE decisions based on the slimmest of information. Market Garden is testament to that... "As the Irish Guards' war diary notes: 'Our intelligence spent the day in a state of indignant surprise: one German regiment after another appeared which had no right to be there.'" ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

Wow, someone who actually sounds vaguely interested in what I do. Maybe I won't kill myself after all. Since this is a pointless thread, I'll take the opportunity to point out that everybody should buy Radiohead's latest record immediately. David Founding member, Legion of the Damned ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

I can't take the time to read through Speedy's post, so can someone tell me what it's all about? Thanks for your help. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

The numbering system is all to hell. They count until they get fed up, and then go back to the beginning because it sounds cooler. ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

I agree with Andreas (probably because my brain is jelly too). You can say that the issue of a collapsing building is black-and-white, but that's not the important bit – what matters is what happens next. Andreas gives a good example of a situation where it is very unclear both what your men would be best to do, and what you might want them to do. The computer can't decide the best course of action for itself. A building is essentially the same in this respect. Okay, it's about to collapse, so your men need to get out. But which way? The computer has no idea of the dynamics of the battle, so it can't possibly decide the safest exit route. Your men are as likely to be cut down when they exit, as they are to be crushed by falling rubble. If you command your men properly, you can keep this situation to a minimum. When it does occur, and if the building collapses, that's war. If the AI were programmed to react to this, I think it's only likely to make things worse. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

The Commissar wrote: > Arguing that it cannot work because other people are not "suited" for realising it is not a valid argument. How dare you disagree with me! DIE!! > It's insane. Oh no! My cover has been blown! [retreats into the shadows] ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

Make that two. Come on everyone, chip in and soon we'll be able to work it out! ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

The thing with CM compared to the likes of 40k, is that the heart of CM is statistics and information. It's essentially a simulator, not a game. It has all the armour plating and weapon effectiveness specifications, and it represents them with a nice 3D engine – but as many people have pointed out, CM doesn't please the average gamer. It's visually impressive, for sure, but it doesn't have the kind of graphical realism you'd need to attract a wider audience. It's basically for people who want to know that their Panther G was taken out by a Stuart for realistic reasons, not because the game programmers thought it would be cool. CM certainly leads where others should follow, but I'm not sure the CM engine is the starting point they'd want to use. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

The unit info panel is designed to fit into a 640x480 screen. On larger screens, the areas to either side of this panel are blanked out – but the larger your screen, the shallower this bar is in proportion. So you can't make the info panel wider, as it won't fit on the smallest screen – and the bigger your screen, the smaller the percentage of space the bar occupies, so it's hardly important. There are two other issues to consider – firstly, the view window needs to be rectangular. The info panel at the bottom and the main view window are drawn using different techniques, so they need to be separate. Besides, if the info panel were in the corner or something, making the view window irregular, this would be annoying. Secondly, you don't know how good you've got it. It is nothing short of incredible how minimalist and unobtrusive the Combat Mission interface is. A panel at the bottom, and that's it. No border. No console with buttons for every possible command. No info screens flashing info about how long it's been since Corporal Dodds in 2nd Platoon last had a cup of tea. In other words, the amount of screen real estate CM offers to the actual view window is abnormally high, so be glad this is a BTS game and not Microsoft or Hasbro! This might seem the easy route, but it's actually a very brave way to go. BTS are selling CM on the basis of it being a soundly conceived game, not on it looking cool at a glance. A lot of people might be put off because CM is so minimalist – the kind of people that bigger companies rely on for their big profits. BTS have bravely kept the frills to a minimum, rewarding those who persevere – something which bigger companies would never dare to do. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

This forum actually has the bare minimum of ranks. Others have a score of them, so the more posts you make, the further up the ranks you get. Personally I prefer being regarded as a 'Member' to a 'Sergeant' or something – military ranks just make the whole thing seem silly. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

Being a sniper involves hiding for hours on end, waiting for someone of value to shoot. Snipers aren't support units like machineguns – that's what sharpshooters are for. I can't imagine a sniper scenario being very exciting. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

I think BTS already has the market for the kind of games which you could base on the CM engine. In other words, if you licensed the CM engine, you would be selling your product mainly to CM fans. I don't think many companies would regard this as commercially viable (and remember that BTS exists through shunning most people's ideas of commercial viability). The only people likely to want to do a total conversion are fans, and I'm not sure a motley group of fans would make a good enough job of it. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

Oh that's right, everybody give all their source code to OmniGroup. How charitable of them to accept it. ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

Colonel_Deadmarsh wrote: > To be honest, I'm worried that flat maps with little to moderate tree coverage, where men have to hide in buildings because there's no other place to hide, are gonna be killed too easily by tanks. Once again, it seems like you expect CM to make safe or feasible something which, in reality, would be equally dangerous or unfeasible. > It seems as if men are already seen too easily by the enemy in this game...but that's another thread. And you think that hasn't been discussed to death before? > BTS, I'm lobbying for something to be done about this before we draw parallels from the weakness of infantry in this game to the infantry in CC3. What would be the point in that? David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

Scipio wrote: > I want to see the casualities that my fire causes, represented by dead bodies. But I want to see them only in the action sequenze, and maybe in the following order phase! So I can say - yo, that squad has taken ## casualities, time to assault that position. This is not something you would know, whether every casualty were represented or not. Just because you know the location of an enemy squad, does not mean you know how many men is in it, let alone how many casualties it just took. If you want this information, click on the enemy squad. It will either tell you the number of men and casualties, or the relevant boxes will be blank, indicating that this information isn't available to you. Even if you saw each 'hit' the enemy took, it's highly unlikely that the information you desire would be clear enough. You would basically get a pile of bodies underneath the enemy squad, and you would have to zoom in and examine this pile of bodies to work out what it represents (are there two bodies on top of each other? Are they from different squads?) – when it would be far easier to simply click on the squad and read its casualty figures. Lastly, while you don't see bodies, you do actually see hits. If a squad takes a casualty, and your men are aware of this, then you will see the squad 'flinch'. If you don't see a flinch, either the squad hasn't taken casualties, or it has but you don't know it. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

Also, there is no graphical representation for sneaking, so your guys look like they're just out for a stroll – but as far as the game engine is concerned they're sneaking. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

There is a fix for this, but even if there weren't, don't forget the 'beta' bit. You can't expect OS X to work properly at this stage, and if you're serious about your computer you should really be sticking with OS 9 until X is finalised. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

That's like saying "there'll be better computers out next year, so I won't waste my money on one just now". You could spend your life waiting for better things. =) David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

The main source of friction between CC and CM fans, on this forum at least, is when someone comes along and claims that CM is wrong for being turn-based, and CC is more realistic, and Atomic is going to do a 3D Close Combat and pull the carpet out from under BTS. Otherwise there's no reason why any rivalry should exist, beyond the aforementioned tribalism. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

Colonel_Deadmarsh wrote: > I'm still in favor though of making those buildings stronger. This is hardly going to make things more realistic. The issue is that buildings don't take gradual damage – they remain intact under bombardment and then suddenly collapse. This is as likely to be an advantage as a disadvantage. Fire one shot at an average building, and the façade is going to collapse. Fire another shot, and you'll bugger up the insides. A couple more shots and the building will collapse. In other words, if you have infantry fighting from a building, this quirk of CM will be in your favour – instead of being annihilated when the façade goes down, they have a chance to continue fighting, and then withdraw before the building collapses. In reality, the only moderately safe parts of a building under shellfire are the basement and the back, places which your men can't fight from, so they might as well not be indoors at all. CM allows you to fight from a building in the face of artillery, and I think if it were entirely realistic, you would find buildings even LESS useful under these circumstances. The bottom line is, buildings aren't the safe haven you make them out to be. David ------------------ ...the pilot was able to circle and make a safe belly landing. According to O'Neal, 'this guy jumped out and ran up to me, shouting, "Give me a gun, quick! I know right where that Kraut s.o.b. is and I'm gonna get him".'

It's obviously the split-squad issue. All your squads must have been split, and then rejoined at exactly the same instant, whereupon a cataclysmic reaction resulted in them cancelling each other out, and vanishing completely. David ------------------ They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard somebody say, "Perhaps we're intruding, this seems to be a private beach."

It may be that your monitor is too dim. I would call the 'dark green' backgrounds turquoise, and I know that my computer displays colours as they should be, because I work in the graphics field. I would agree that 'visited links' are less clear, though – dark green text on turquoise. I would also agree that the alternate blue/turquoise of posts is a bad idea. It's good for distinguishing one post from another, but bad where specific colours may be clear on one background while dim on another. Lastly, it's an old wives' tale that looking at something unclear will hurt your eyes. There is no part of your eye which can be harmed by reading in low light, or trying to read small or low-contrast text. You can only hurt your eyes by looking at bright light, or a laser, or poking them with a stick. Generally keeping healthy will do far more for your eyes than trying to avoid 'straining' them. David ------------------ They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard somebody say, "Perhaps we're intruding, this seems to be a private beach."

I think the British have a love-hate relationship with America. Basically, if there are things about America that people like (Friends, everything costing a fraction of what it does here, more sunshine), they'll use it as an example of how great the country is; while if there are things they dislike (Jerry Springer, super-rich/trailer-trash stereotypes, celebrity politicians, Hollywood's bastardisation of the truth), they'll use it as an example of how much the country sucks. In other words, people like or dislike America as the mood takes them. David ------------------ They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard somebody say, "Perhaps we're intruding, this seems to be a private beach."

I'm not suggesting anything by MacPherson's English accent, although with a name like that and a kilt, I'd expect him to be a Scotsman. Maybe he was born here. The story about Sam Magill's platoon is extremely interesting, both in that it bears certain similarities to MacPherson's version, while making no mention of him. It is ironic that the BBC seem to have had a reporter on the story, and now they're reporting a fanciful new story totally contradictory to their own original. One wonders if things might have worked out differently if the news hadn't coincided with Market Garden – someone is hardly going to come along now, and claim full credit for a major Allied success during the war, if it had been big news at the time. I may pursue MacPherson's version of events, because his facts do seem to be in order. the SOS article mentions the Allier river (which was not mentioned in the TV programme), and this was indeed in line with Elster's advance. Magill was operating south over the Loire river, and if you follow the Loire east, it loops round to the south, and branches into the Allier. In other words, as Elster marched north-east towards Germany, Magill and the US 83rd were on his left flank, while MacPherson and his French were supposedly up ahead. It would be quite easy to omit MacPherson's involvement, being only one man – but it's quite bizarre that he basically claims to have done exactly what Magill did. Maybe they're the same person! The plot thickens... David ------------------ They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard somebody say, "Perhaps we're intruding, this seems to be a private beach."

Okay, here it is, transcript of the relevant parts of Secret Agent, BBC 2, Thursday, September 28th. The three bits about Major MacPherson were in between stories about other people. He speaks with a posh English accent, in a slightly disjointed manner, and at times almost sounds like a German (it's a conspiracy!), but he appears to be 'with it'. The narrator has a slightly gravelly, typical English accent and speaks with a low, matter-of-fact tone. The imagery consists of nicely done, abstract re-enactments of some of the events in question, the camera off-centre and out of focus to avoid being too specific – interspersed with vaguely relevant archive footage. Initial observations; the second story talks about the Das Reich Panzer division, but this is not the one he 'captures'. The relevant, third, story speaks only of an 'enemy column'. The German officer MacPherson mentions is indeed Major-General Elster, so well done Hofbauer and friends. There is not much to suggest that the people at Scotland On Sunday have actually interviewed MacPherson, although they might have read the book which accompanies the TV series (yes a book – arrrgh – no, I have no intention of getting it =) ), so either by error or intention, they seem to have confused two different stories, and misspelt Elster's name. MacPherson's stories do seem quite adventurous, but he sounds like he knows what he's talking about. Here follows the transcript, make of it what you will. David * * * * * Sixth of June, Nineteen Forty-Four. The largest invasion in history. As the troops landed on the beaches, a fresh wave of SOE agents was parachuting behind enemy lines. They were to link up with the resistance. Everyting the French did now would have to be carefully coordinated with the Allies. SOE had formed a hundred or so special three-man teams, codenamed Jedburgh. One of the youngest was the Quinine team. Major Thomas MacPherson was twenty-three, his radio operator Arthur Brown was nineteen, and his French Lieutenant Michelle de Bourbon was eighteen. Far from being under cover, the Jeds were to remain in uniform. In MacPherson's case, this was a kilt. "Our job was to create the maximum amount of disruption to give a message to the French that the armies might have been a long time in penetrating the defences in Normandy, but the uniformed help was there on the spot in their own piece of the countryside. The Jeds wanted to draw attention to their presence." As so often for SOE, MacPherson's first problem was overcoming wrangles amongst the various resistance groups. "I had no idea, not only of the schism between the Communists and the rest, but the diversity of the rest – they all operated under different alphabetcial names – the AS, which was the Armée Secrête – the ORA, the Organisation of Resistance of the Army – dozens of others – they all had their little agendas and it was one of my tasks to try to concentrate their mind on the war and not the post-war." MacPherson travelled by car between the various resistance groups, co-ordinating their actions. "As you drove around, you really never knew what you were going to meet around the next corner. You hoped it was nothing nasty. If we spotted a roadblock first we'd reverse very sharply out of it. There would be an exchange of fire, but it's surprisingly difficult to hit a car moving at reasonable speed. I think most of us were living in an atmosphere of sheer mental terror most of the operation. It sharpens the senses very much. I hadn't been there very long before they put up posters in various towns offering enormous rewards for my apprehension." On one occasion he was having a celebratory drink with the Mayor of Decazeville, having just sabotaged a German petrol dump, when he was caught by surprise. "We saw at the far end of the street, two German armoured cards appear. We got back into that car with remarkable speed. They sent one of the armoured cars up to pursue me. There was a long hill out of Decazeville and we were much quicker up the hill so we thought we'd risk a bit of fun, and manufactured a terribly simple device called a Gammon grenade." MacPherson soon had a big enough lead to hide the car and make his way up onto an overhead footbridge. "At the appropriate time I leant over the bridge and dropped it. It blew the engine to bits and set the armoured car on fire." MacPherson and his team spent the following weeks sabotaging telegraph lines, bridges and railways, but his favourite was blowing up the electricity pylons carrying power to the factories of France. "There is a splendid noise of crumbling metal and sparks flying in every direction as the wires whip about and short and so forth. I used to enjoy that very much indeed." * * * * * Meanwhile in central France, MacPherson was becoming bolder in taking the fight to the enemy. He discovered that the crack Das Reich Panzer division was racing through his area on its way to Normandy. It could be crucial for the German defences. MacPherson was going to try to delay it. "It was obvious that firing a few Sten guns at armoured vehicles was not going to bring the column to a halt. There were trees close to the road and we conceived the idea of blowing these trees in such a way that they fell across the road as an obstacle. In the first area we blew two trees down – quite a formidable barrier." Before moving down the road, MacPherson left one of his men behind as an added surprise for the Germans. "The Germans drove up to this barrier. The column was led by a halftrack and the halftrack had some troops in the back. Some of the troops got out, walked up to the barrier, scratched their heads, tried to push it out of the way, and of course couldn't, it was much too heavy." The Germans were at a loss what to do. Everything stopped while they called up a bulldozer tank. "With some difficulty it cleared the trees. The whole thing must have taken well over three hours. Then the tank was told to go in the front of the column. At that time the man I'd left behind opened up with his Sten gun. Because it was coming from behind them they had to swivel their guns round, so the chap was able to skip out of cover, down the hill and disappear. "What I did at the next barrier was to use the same technique, but well camouflaged with dust and gravel, I put our only two anti-tank mines. The tank came along, and this time they paused." Expecting another ambush, the Germans then spent several hours searching the woods. "Then they gave the all-clear, and the tank ploughed forward, and I'm happy to say it lost one track. It meant a very long delay while they sent for another heavy vehicle." MacPherson used the delay to dash ahead and set up his third and final roadblock. He booby-trapped the trees to catch the soldiers he knew would be hunting for anti-tank mines. "Cumulatively, if you could imagine this in various degrees going on the whole eight-hundred mile length of France, it contributed to a considerable delay in the projected arrival of these heavy reinforcements." * * * * * MacPherson's boldest and most dangerous moment came at the end of August. "We drove in a captured German Red Cross car straight through the German lines at very high speed." He was heading straight for the German military headquarters. MacPherson knew that an enemy column was heading his way, and that his resistance fighters would be no match. He had decided to bluff the German commander-in-chief. "We sat down at ten o'clock the following morning on a long table. The plan was that I should appear in full uniform, and make it quite clear to Major-General Elster, the commander of the Germans, that I had my battalion, and a force of tanks, and some guns across the river, and that he was welcome to come. I was very nervous but suddenly I was hyped up for it, this was something that we just had to achieve because if we didn't there was going to be a lot of blood shed, including me I fancy. It must have given the right impression because he agreed to sign surrender documents, and the German General and his Colonel both passed across their personal weapons, and that was the end of the war for twenty-three thousand Germans, and really the end of the resistance operation for most of the centre of France." MacPherson's audacity had paved the way for the Allies to liberate central France. He and his team were fêted as heroes in Dijon. "It was quite an emotional scene, as you can imagine – liberation and Vive la France and the Marseillaise and all that. It's a nice thing to remember."