TexasToast

I love the ASL site, but I have had major issues with play balance on some of the scenarios. Maybe I'm just unlucky, but it seems like most of the ones I have tried have been somewhat or very unbalanced for head-to-head play. A friend and I tried the Market Garden series, but had to give it up. I also tried one of the paratrooper pack scenarios TCP/IP (Defiance on Hill 30?), and found myself attacking dug in paratroops with a basically inferior German force. In the Market Garden game (Tettau's Attack, I believe), I even went back and re-played the scenario against the AI and couldn't win! Just 3 Little Stuarts is a fun little battle, but even the briefing states it is tough to win as US against a human, yet it is marked PBEM$ in the pack. Maybe the units don't translate well all the time, or the FOW and digging in give too much of an advantage to the defender sometimes. Or maybe it's just me and the guys I play against? You can get Rune's scenario pack at the Manx's Combat Missions site (another very nice resource).

Another match is in the books. I received a reluctant surrender from Kain on turn 18. My crack rifle company reinforced by some armor and 105 VT artillery support was able to move forward under merciless arty barrages and clear out my side of the swamp. Fortunately for me the VL was on my side of the river, and I was able to turn back a couple of attacks across the bridge before ultimately destroying the span with a combined attack from my Priest, Super Pershing and arty. Left with no quick way across the river and being hounded by the deadly VT, Kain finally gave in after a very tough fight. As a side note, I only used two 105 VT spotters (trying to dispel the myth that you need 1000+ points of arty to win these match-ups).

IIRC, it had to do with seeing enemy units targeting ambush markers, not area fire.

Some graphical ideas: 1) Building walls transparent from the inside - currently your view from a unit inside a building is a gray wall. 2) Option for full-screen graphics mode - drop the unit info and controls and run it from the keyboard/mouse. 3) Camera presets - store and recall frequently used camera positions, maybe on function keys?

Kain and I are well underway (turn 5?) in The Swamp - we have gotten the initial truck/jeep exchange out of the way, and now I estimate there is 500-1000 points of artillery raining down on my side of the map. I'm hoping that the three guys I have left will be enough to hold out in the end, with the help of my immobilized vehicles of course.

OK, I think I saw this again. We saved out of network game at the start of a turn, before giving any orders. My opponent sent me the next email turn and it started with a movie. I did not get to issue orders for that turn. In this case my opponent saved the game - perhaps only the one that saves gets to do orders in the first PBEM turn?

I've been wondering about this transition also. Any guidelines?

Same here.

Thanks John, very interesting. I knew VT was good, but wow. I will have to try that 155 VT next time.

IIRC, ambush markers go away if nobody targets them for a turn (that's the only way to get rid of them). Sounds like that is what happened to you?

The surrender came somewhere around turn 9 or 10. At that point he had remnants of about 4 Sturmgruppe platoons and one Marder II facing a veteran Rifle company and 2 crack Engineer Platoons, plus a Sherman, Priest, M-10, and 2 Greyhounds. We managed to get through several turns per day to move the game along nicely.

I'm proud to report the first final score of the first round: I have recently obtained a surrender from the valiant Clement. Our battlefield was a small city full of heavy buildings on top of a hill, in heavy fog and wet ground. It turns out we both had bought for an infantry/SPA battle. Luckily for me he got a gun bogged down, while all my assets made it to the town. After an armor exchange in my favor and a couple of buildings full of infantry demolished, it became clear that he could not continue. Naturally I will be providing Clement an opportunity to avenge this defeat, outside the scope of this little tournament. Thanks Duke for your effort in putting this together.

Extremely bad form - bumping my own topic. Does it make sense to expand tournament save to allow the originator to set the Axis and Allied passwords to eliminate "previews"? Is there another way to do this?

Now that I am participating in a tournament, I have noticed something that strikes me as odd. When I get a tournament-saved scenario, I could open it up and play it through from either side, multiple times, before/during my actual tourney match. Am I expected or not expected to do this? (Not that I have time anyway.) It seems that the Tournament Save function should not only prohibit editing, but also pre-set a password for each side, that would be provided to the appropriate player, that would restrict them from seeing the other side at all. Am I missing something?

Great work as usual Tiger. How about some dirt? My favorite now is the new US halftrack that looks nice and dirty. Seems like every vehicle in this game looks like it just rolled off the showroom floor. Of course, I still download and use every one I can get my hands on...

Even though I usually play Allies, I vote no, just in case I don't.

I'm up for it.

Um, I think they are on to us: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Combat Mission fans have descended on our site in just the latest evangelism effort we've seen here at the MGDB. But what do the rest of you think about Combat Mission? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This is from the home page at: http://www.gamedb.com/ Looks like we generated some buzz here...

Just voted - I figure it's going to take about 25 more 10's to make the top 20.

Great job - you hit everything that I wished for, but was too lazy to ask about, and sounds also. Keep up the good work!

For me, it is not so much a matter of brighter but of less saturated colors. Around here you don't see grass/foliage with as much yellow as the original, Gunslinger's seems to bring it down from the bright yellow-green to a more brown-green mix, which looks more realistic to me on my machine (also a PowerBook).

I have noticed the same thing setting up a scenario with the AI in defense - mortars in C&C of HQ did not fire. Only when I put them in positions to get direct LOS did they start shooting.

Perhaps the AI should move troops out of buildings that are heavily damaged and under fire - kind of like when the building catches on fire, but less frantically. This seems like the kind of thing the troops would do without waiting for direct orders, eh?

One more manual-type clarification - what is the effective range of the Gammon bomb? I'm about to rush some armor and I would like to know how close I have to get (well not me personally, but you get the idea).

There is clearly a need for a FAQ here, to cover those issues commonly appearing on the forum that are not addressed in the manual. I am foolishly volunteering my services to build this FAQ to provide summary answers to the questions and references to threads where necessary or interesting. I have no qualifications to recommend me other than the fact that I have a spell-checker, made good grades in English, can type really fast, and enjoy most CM-related activities. I could provide a nice HTML document that perhaps one day could be hosted on one of the prime-time CM web sites. All I am asking is that interested parties post their requests for the FAQ here - your pet peeve questions that you don't want to see anymore, or possibly just items that you think would be helpful. That at least saves me from thinking of all the questions myself. I don't want to get into rules or anything in the manual, or tips and tactics. Here is my general outline at this point: GENERAL What will CM2,3,... be about? How many copies have been sold? ACRONYMS 101 C&C, OOB, ASL, ROFLMAO, etc. DESIGN PHILOSOPHY Why are only three men shown in a squad? Why not "real-time"? FEATURE REQUESTS Can I get a full-length movie? Can I have a unit list to find my FO? (sorry about that) FORUM ISSUES What is a Refresh Monkey? What is a Peng? I do not want to step on anyone's toes here, so if someone is already doing this, or just wants to do it themselves and grab all the credit, then that is A-OK by me. Maybe there already is a FAQ and everyone but me knows it. Just trying to pitch in and was inspired by guachi's fine work on the unit list, not to mention all the other great stuff that is out there. If no one responds, I will consider myself off the hook. I am posting this late at night (CDT USA) to give myself the greatest chance of this happening.