chrisl

Bah. He's just an overpriced sack of saltwater, contaminated with various other bits of gunk, and a lot of hot air to boot. If he won't take the op challenge, I'll sign up (Snapdragon has vanished after I tormented myself for oh, about 5 minutes, buying units). Though discussions of primacy are moot-- we know you're a primate, just "what sort?" is the question. (and make it 1.12) ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk) [This message has been edited by chrisl (edited 02-09-2001).]

If you're going to be such a grog here in the cesspool, I'm going to have to ask why BTS didn't model the Smilodon-- they modeled all the other German cat-armor, and demand that they give us a patch that includes it. The smilodon fatalis was one of the deadliest of the big cats ever, and the smilodon californicus was a more laid back, but equally deadly cat. More importantly, they have a really cool name, and they look really cool. Check out these web pages: http://www.bluelion.org/smilodon.htm http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/smilodon.html I demand that BTS include these in a patch package, preferable 1.12. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

- try to make convoys be vehicles of the same type-- all similar halftracks, etc. You can move them "fast" if you do this and they won't collide. - keep track of their movement delays before you start them, and add any necessary delays to make them start in a reasonable order if they're all bunched up. - When you park them, line them up like a parking lot (diagonal parking, backed in)so that they're easy to pull out into a line. Sometimes I like to park 4 halftracks so a platoon can run up and hop into them and head across the map, or even have them parked loaded as mechanized reserves. - plot the moves so that the lines don't go over each other at all, basically a bunch of parallel lines along the road (or wherever). If you can't do that, then at least try to do staggered lines so that the first vehicle is on the left, second on the right, third on the left, etc. - take routes that are just plain different-- especially if you have to go through enemy fields of fire, then there are lots of targets that require shifts of aim before you can hit them. - once they're in motion, add pauses in subsequent turns if someone is overtaking. I generally don't have much trouble with vehicles bunching up (and I've played some pretty big scenarios) if I use approximately these rules. And I usually put the vehicles on "fast". It did just strike me though, that since "move" is really the right way to make a convoy (once you work out the command delay), a command like "vmove" that is faster than walking pace, but slow enough that most vehicles can do it (and the same speed for all vehicles) might be a simple addition to CM2 that makes it easier to move bunches of vehicles and doesn't require any AI additions. Really slow vehicles (max speed <20 mph or so) might have to be excluded to make this useful. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

Hmmm. Germany, eh. Last time I was here there were two of them. I think I may still be PNG since I never filled out that damn census form...what an orderly bunch. Do you have corn chips here yet? Or peanut butter? That Nutella stuff is way too sweet. I don't know if we should keep the pool here very long if you can't at least get some Doritos to eat while you play. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

I hate to be insulting to someone who's played a lot (well, actually Croda, I don't mind it at all in your case), but are they regular buried AT mines or are they daisy chain? If they're daisy chain they're supposed to be visible-- they're a bunch of mines strung together on the road. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

If you had any brains at all you'd figure out how to get a masters degree in CM. But you don't, so it'll probably be something like "the effect of duckwebs on art in the latter half the 20th century" ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

3 ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

If you have 4 or 5 pillboxes with interlocking fields of fire, no tank will get 3 shots on the pillbox. If you have one lone pillbox without protective fires from others, it will die quickly. The ranges generally aren't all that large, and tanks have to be fairly accurate to be able to hit other tanks. If it takes on average four tanks for a shot to get through the slit, that's probably not unreasonable. Try setting up a staggered line of pillboxes covering each other and see what they do to the tanks. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

The point of the story isn't that tanks can easily hit the slits, but that you can easily suppress the pillbox crew to the extent that it doesn't matter what you use to kill it. There were 10 pillboxes, presumably with many interlocking fields of file. By maintaining fire on all of them at once, you can approach them one at a time and kill them with anything--engineers, tanks, grenades, flamethrowers, etc. Pills are more fragile than tanks-- they can't hide, and if you lay down enough fire on them the crew won't look out. Something that CM doesn't model that CPT Brown took advantage of is that the pillboxes have shutters that they close under heavy fire-- then you can't get a firing slit penetration, but you can waltz up and knock out the Pillbox. The adjacent company didn't suppress all the pillboxes simultaneously, and presumably got clobbered in the crossfire. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

Here's a real life incident of bunkers being taken out by infantry teams with armor support-- they are far from invincible when approached with good tactics, and can be a major pain when approached with bad ones. The engineer teams were essentially extraneous-- once the bunkers were pinned, they could take them out however they wanted. http://www.tankbooks.com/intviews/brown/brown9.htm Edited to add this quote: "The only casualty we had, there was one group of Germans who happened to be in a trench between two pillboxes, we didn’t know they were there, and the men they fired on were just slightly wounded. So we knocked out those ten pillboxes with a slightly wounded man or two." ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk) [This message has been edited by chrisl (edited 02-05-2001).]

Blind targeting does predispose toward shooting the targeted unit and is especially useful in some circumstances: - you know a tank is coming into LOS (because you're moving at it or it's moving at you) and you want your AFV/gun/bazooka/AT weapon targeted on it. This will cause the loader for the AFV or gun to load up AP. - you see a bunch of infantry coming (or going) and you want to make sure everyone gets suppressed equally (so that they're parked in the trees when the arty hits 15 sec later, for example) - there's more, but you get the idea. If you blind target a unit with a 60 mm mortar and it's not in LOS of an HQ in contact with the mortar, then it's just like any other blind target-- the mortar will fire when it sees it, but otherwise not, and might drop the targeting order if something else comes into sight. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

We wonder the same thing every rush hour in Los Angeles... I generally will give them a sequence of pauses to start them moving 15 seconds apart, and/or stagger them slightly side to side. With a little practive it really is possible, but at the same time, you'll start to discover that unless you're well behind your own lines and out of LOS of the enemy, moving in close groups isn't usually a good idea, because you become susceptible to arty on the whole group, or direct fire taking out the vehicles on the ends and jamming up the whole lot. Hitting the front and back vehicles first was a common tactic to trap a convoy or other small group of vehicles. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

One thing I discovered (and it took quite a while) is that it will lock up unless I turn off the intro movie (so that it doesn't even start-- not just skip it). IIRC it requires that you hold down the shift key during launch once, and then it will always skip the movie. The other thing I discovered is that CM crashes unless I use the original video drivers that came with my mac (PB G3/300, now running 8.6). When I switched to 8.6 I had to revert to the old drivers. I also downloaded a little shareware thing called switchres that lets you force it into 1024x768, but with my PB it then is forced to use software rendering, and I lose transparency effects, so I usually use 640x480. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

Who? ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

It's not about finding opponents (anyone can do that)--it's about publicly humiliating them (whether you're winning or losing). ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

A lot of times it's been the last refuge of civility when the maneuver/attrition or BTS-is-Pro-German/BTS-is-Pro-Allied or whatever the argument of the month is rages outside. You can always get a game, if you're willing to taunt a bit (even badly) and it gets you some high quality games without a ladder. People don't stop sending files when they're losing-- they surrender and post excuses. People don't engage in gamey things to win, they engage in gamey things to havge snide remarks made about them. Occasionally two people get thrown onto a really dreadful map with a horrible combination of forces and are required to post play-by-play as they suffer. Lots of cheap thrills. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

One of the more prolix posters can can probably say it better, but it's a basically an opponent finder thread where you're supposed to trash talk someone into playing, and then make disparaging remarks about their play (whether they're true or not) in great detail as the game progresses. It periodically goes too far (which it's done recently), when someone either doesn't realize or forgets that it's all supposed to be good-natured taunting rather than sexist/racist/homophobic/bigoted harrassment. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

Why does he want to know, or why is true north not the same as magentic north? ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

So where the hell is your NC-17 forum? Put it in your sig for a while so we can find it. And if you want game updates, you'll have to send me a file. I don't even care what the matchup is. Snapdragon and that frightwigged politician are slow, and Peter"I love wool socks"NZer went into hiding because things were looking so bad. He's about to lose his fourth AFV (a lowly Puma) where I've lost none (unless you count the Sherman that busted the drive shaft or something (man that was a loud bang) after bogging the first turn) He's had nearly a full company pretty well slaughtered, and we're making stew out of his StuH42 and crew-- they're like tortoises-- cook up the meat inside the shell. yummy. I've lost a sharpshooter and a couple of my troops have gotten hangnails. And one guy threw up his breakfast, but that was from bad driving. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

That's like saying we're less boring than watching paint dry. Or less boring than lying in the hospital doped to the gills with opiates (wait--that doesn't sound so bad), or less boring than being dead or worse--Hiram. You can go make the rounds of the ladders, but you'll find the pool to provide a high level of competition, as long as you can stand (and deliver) the taunts. Do a search under "Peng, I take our challenge public"-- I think it's still out there in the ether, locked to protect us from ourselves. It annihilated itself one night--we've been a roving band of vagrants annoying the board ever since. But the games--very competitive, and often very imbalanced. Much like the residents. So if all you want is some real players, go away and try to fight your way up the ladders. If you want to experience CM in its highest form, stay, lay into someone verbally (and make it good), and then wait for the file. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk) [This message has been edited by chrisl (edited 02-03-2001).]

If you want a game in the pool you better be prepared to receive (and give) a batting about the head. Don't say you were never warned. Now bat someone or go away. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

shift-W does the weather effects. You're card has to be capable of transparency effects-- if you don't get transparent buildings and high quality smoke you can't get fog. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

The joy of living in southern California. It may be smoggy, have way too many cars, and generally smell bad, but the weather is nearly always perfect (I forget sometimes that it's winter) and there is good salsa everywhere. Cilantro is sold in vast bundles, I have lemons growing in the yard (limes I have to buy). There are fish tacos for the asking (and a few $$). And did I mention fresh salsa? Even the crummy cafeteria at work has pretty decent pico de gallo, as well as add your own jalapenos. And did I mention the fresh salsa? There's a couple of mexican restaurants in Prague. I ate at one of them-- it was full of americans who got sick of goulash. There was also a mexican restaurant in Freiburg i.Br. about 15 years ago. It wasn't great, but it was at least a pretty good effort. I think it was run by italians. Closer to you I think there's at least one acceptable one in Amsterdam, within a short walk of the main train station, but that was a long time ago. you may just have to rot in hell, eating bangers and mash. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

That was before Peter went skiing to forget about his beating. I might have to go smack germanboy or something to get someone to send me some files. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)

At risk of feeding a troll... That's really not true at all- allied tanks generally carry a few smoke rounds, but if that's enough to get you blown to bits, you're probably doing something wrong You should never get in a stationary tank duel from either side. If you're in one place for very long, all hell will rain down on your head-- arty, direct fire, zooks, etc. Your opponent should be moving, too, to keep you from getting an accurate range. I lose very few tank guns to on map mortars--mortars suck at hitting a moving target. Off map arty does get the occasional gun, but not all that often-- sitting under a barrage isn't a good thing to do. The mortars are generally much more effective when used to indirect fire against opponents MG42s. Because a similar hit would go in one side and out the other side of any US tank-- they explode from hits that would cause gun damage to a Panther. The M2 is nice against halftracks, but generally the M1919 seems better against infantry. I haven't noticed the M2 being that devastating since a few patches ago. I have still (in the past day) seen US squads decimated by the MG42. Still, there are no ueberweapons. CM is representing only 1944 and later (Beyond Overlord) a period in which you seem to agree that both sides had good tank comms. One always has nearly perfect control over ones own tanks. I think that really depends on the scenario or QB parameters. To some extent, I agree that that's true, but part of that is inherent in the scope of the game-- Infantry/Combined Arms battles of the company up to battalion level. It's not a tank sim. Tanks are part of the game, but they're just another tool in the arsenal. As for realistic/unrealistic tactics, there have been a fair number of professional soldiers who think it does a pretty fair job of forcing realistic tactics. I tend to try to keep my opponent more than 100 m away as the US, but if I have a bunch of german SMG squads, I want to get in close. If you want to sit at a distance and pop the enemy with long range tank fire, you have to wait for the north africa version (#3 I think). There was a whole lot of close range infantry fighting in 1944-45 Europe. If you want to PBEM send me a file (1.1) As for tips on playing the Americans: -keep your vehicles moving at all times. -as mentioned above, the M8 HMC is great for inf support. -Hellcats and Jacksons are great TDs, but they should either be moving fast (with moves plotted all the way to the next cover) or doing a very short "move" segment where they can target and fire. -Get in close to take advantage of fast turrets. -US arty is great-- I don't leave home without at least one 81 mm FO, and the 105s are nice too. Especially if there's lots of forest to generate treebursts. -try to force the germans to expose themselves at 100+ meters. ------------------ "If you can taste the difference between caviar on a cracker and ketchup on a Kit-Kat while blindfolded, you have not had enough aquavit to be ready for lutefisk." (stolen from some web page about lutefisk)