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In addition to changing the setup zones, you also have to remember to change the friendly sides in the battle parameters screen.

Did your AFVs still have ammo remaining?

Thanks, John. I appreciate both the information and the effort to go through the site in such detail.

I'm not sure what the problem with the base ejecting description is: Sounds a lot like the description that civdiv gave: John: Do you have any examples? It seemed that most of the infromation was just repeated and to my untrained eye didn't appear obviously incorrect. Do you have time to elaborate?

More data for one of our favorite perennial topics: Artillery shell effects and effectiveness: Artillery Ammo Page Of particular interest is the diagram of wind and weather effects on smoke screens:

And I thought it sounded an awful lot like some of the technology that was being deployed in cinemas to stop video recording pirates....

Didn't Dr. McCoy use one of these in one episode of the original Star Trek series?

My best anti-AI trick was to put mines in a small clump of trees, flanked by wire. The AI troops would get shot up in the wire and then crawl to the woods where the mines were. It was devastating.

John_d: HQ spotting for vehicle-mounted mortars only works in CMBB and CMAK. In CMBO you can't do it. The only thing that works for letting vehicle-mounted mortars in CMBO fire from a hidden position is to not move them and use TRPs.

Right. But is the incidence of such mobility (and possible gun kills through ancillary mechanisms) high enough in CM?

Well, the real issue in the article is a bit more about the effectiveness of HE artillery fire from near misses. It seems that direct hits are not needed to effectively take tanks out of the battle. All that was needed was shell impact within about 30m of the tanks and there would be sufficient gun, equipment (vision blocks, radio, etc.) or track damage to render the tanks hors de combat.

It's also a bit odd that some of the text in the end screen is in English. Looks like not all of the user interface text has been internationalized.

And not to forget that gun damage sometimes applies to the machine gun and not the main armament.

A friend of mine ran across an article in the November-December 2002 Field Artillery journal, pp 8-11. His comments are: You can look up the article itself at the Field Artillery Journal Web Site

Although by far not guaranteed to produce even matchups, my preference is to let the computer pick forces for quick battles. One upside is that you will get (or have to) use equipment that you would normally never even consider. That makes things more interesting. If your main concern, though, is that you want good matchups for long-term PBEM games, you shouldn't be playing quick battles anyway. You should use human-designed scenarios. There is a large supply of them and they often have ratings.

Well, I don't. I plan the general course of the action. On the attach I identify what I expect my major axes of attack to be and set up the order of march. I generally keep some reserve and then adjust based on what I discover. On defense, I put out observation and harassment units and determine where I want to make my main stand. Again, this gets adjusted as I see what is coming towards me. On no account, do I do detailed planning of all movement before the game begins. It would be a waste, since a lot would need to be redone in light of the information that reconnaissance brings in. I do, generally, plan all of my movement up to where I expect the first contact to be.

Mr. E. van Pickier would like to point out that the current PC version of the game runs on currently shipping hardware and operating systems. The Mac version requires locating old, used hardware and getting an operating system that Apple stopped distributing. It is as if you could only play the PC version of CM on Pentium III or earlier processors and Windows 2000 (but not XP).

Well, the navy's Sparrow-based AA missile also has a secondary anti-ship role. IIRC a US carrier accidentally engaged and hit a Turkish destroyer during NATO maneuvers. Google helps me find that destroyer MUAVENET was hit by a Sea Sparrow missile fired from US aircraft carrier Saratoga during NATO Exercise Display Determination 92. http://www.turkishnavy.net/tepee.htm Wikipedia adds: The missiles struck Muavenet in the bridge, destroying it and the Combat Information Center, killing most of the Turkish ship's officers. http://tinyurl.com/ax7am (This BBoard doesn't allow parethese in URLs and the Wikipedia link uses parentheses.) Other info: USS SARATOGA accidentally launched two Sea Sparrow missiles of which one hit the Turkey destroyer MAUVENET killing 5 Turkey sailors including the destroyer's commanding officer. http://navysite.de/cvn/cv60.htm

The summary answer to your original questions is that the full game works just like the demo. There aren't any major game play difference between the two. So anything you like (or dislike) about the demo will be present in the full game. [Well, almost. If what you dislike about the demo is a lack of scenarios or an editor, the full game will definitely fix that.] You do have commands that will solve some of your problems, but not all of them. That is partly because your troops will have minds of their own. It is important to learn how to use that and not to insist on doing too much micro-management. Sometimes it is necessary, but if you spend too much time giving specific targets, your overall army performance will drop and your ammo use will increase. As mentioned above, giving cover arcs to your guns will get them to hold fire. There is very little choice about ammo type. The units pick what they think is best for the job at hand. The only real choice you have is with smoke if that is available.

You might try looking at some of the items at the US Army's Center for Military History: http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/ They have the official history "Green Book", as well as a number of research topic papers about World War II.

Fun part from the Aspyr article:

I'm not sure about the other terrain features, but being at a higher level (either through terrain or buildings) helps against units that are behind stone walls.

You can. But by hiding, your spotting ability declines as well. I believe that a unit entering your covered arc will cause you to unhide and engage.

I suspect that it was, since in the current game, you can't actually miss with small arms fire and hit a different unit. At most small arms (MG, anyway) can suppress nearby units, but not do them actual harm. They can only harm the target.

On the first issue, doesn't relative spotting mean that you've already done a LOS computation on those neighboring units? I would think that having an LOS would imply that an LOF exists (discounting some truly limited circumstances where the divergence between LOS and LOF comes into play. I would think this could be safely ignored.) On the other hand, LOF may exist when LOS doesn't. Hiding in tall grass or behind smoke, for example. That does pose a potential problem with not being able to have LOS do double duty as LOF, although one could potentially compute both by continuing the computation once if only concealment was encountered and not actual cover. This would be a sub-linear increase in computation and thus should scale reasonably well. Steve, I think there was a miscommunication about the assumption of the LOF being clear. I meant that in most cases that come up, the LOF will not have the blockage, so having a cheap test to confirm this would mean there would be no need to do a detailed test. The idea is that for any given LOF there would only be a small subset of units, friendly or enemy, which would even need to be considered as being potentially in danger. The friendly units issue is, IMO, the real killer.