Private Pike

I also found "come and see" quite shocking, especially the final statement that during the war thousands (can't remmeber the exact number)of Russian villages were destroyed by the Germans. In Western Europe we remeber German massacres at Lidice, (a small village outside of Prague), Oradour-sur-Glane, (a small French village) and the Ardeatine Caves, (south of Rome), but this appears to have been a daily occurence on the Russian front. Finally checked on my previous post Beevor states that there were a couple of hundred Italians (from the firewood collecting party) and about 12,000 Roumanian traped at Stalingrad. A lot of troops did actually retreat into Staingrad. After the winter of 1941/42 the Germans learnt that to spend a night (let alone possibily 4 months) in an open fox hole on the Steppe in a Russian winter could easily mean death. So troops protecting the flanks had spent sometime building winter quarters consisting of bunkers and dugouts, even using wood from damaged houses in Stalingrad (it wasn't just a good source of firewood) When the Russians kicked them out of these quarters they had the choice of dieing on the freezing Steppe or retreating to the nearest builtup area-Stalingrad. The Sixth Army also had its logistics train behind Stalingrad and when the Russians appeared behind them these non-combat troops (A majority of the troops surronded at Staingrad)retreated to the relative safety of the defensive lines around Staingrad [ October 03, 2002, 02:32 PM: Message edited by: Private Pike ]

So this might explain something. In the demo (still no UK release) I wondered why I didn't get the explosion and fire I was used to (from CMBO), when i knocked out a Tank.

Again its either in Enemy at the gates or Stalingrad by Beevor, can't remember which and I'm at work. They mention that a truck convoy of about 100 Italians from one of the Divisions out on the flanks had come into Stalingrad to collect firewood when the Russians closed the Kessel and they remained during the following battles. Talk about bad luck.

pillock noun [C] BRITISH SLANG a stupid or silly person "The man's a complete pillock." "You pillock, look what you've done!" [as form of address] http://dictionary.cambridge.org/

I was once offered a cease fire half way through a game that I thought I was going to lose. I held the VLs but with very little, most of my infantry were dead and of my two tanks, one had a damaged gun and the other was out of ammo. My opponent didn't realise this. He had no tanks, but quite a bit of infantry left. I felt quite bad agreeing to the cease fire, but it was a tournament game (NQSB I) so I did. I won approx: 70/30. The moral is "be careful offering a cease fire, you MAY be winning and not know it" [ 09-26-2001: Message edited by: Private Pike ]

sorry about the delay, my girlfriend nicked the laptop as soon as I got home so I wasn't able to check out the CM fog, will try again tonight

Ive got a laptop with a sis630 chip set and a PIII 933/128meg RAM. CM seems to run fine with the video memmory set at 16meg. I haven't done any serious testing just used it to play the game, I'll try some fog games when I get home from work and let you know. The graphics card works ok for things like Thief, Delta force landwarrior & AOS II, but nothing stunning. The 1Ghz /32meg Geforce desktop we got at the same time runs much smoother. The only problems I've had with the laptop were serious clipping when I tried to run Delta force II

Its interesting that the British never really used their heavy AA gun the 3.7"(about 92mm) in the anti-armour role. I read somewhere that (in North Africa) this was because they prefered to use it to protect their supply lines from air attack, and that the Ger (man forward deployment of the Flak 88s left their supply lines vunerable to RAF attack. Anyone comment, is this true or were the British just stupid.

Hull, East Yorkshire

Just a quick question: Any sort of rules on the type of map (apart from size), hills, woods etc or do the players decided between them? "Private Pike(allies) vs. Ted(axis) " at least there's no snow this time Thanks Pike [This message has been edited by Private Pike (edited 03-05-2001).]

Count me in again as well

Thanks I'll keep my eyes open for it

Thats interesting because it runs fine on my K6-2 450 with a V3 3000 card and 128meg Ram. I've even installed some of the hi-res mods. (I should qualify "fine" I occasionally get white outs but that 3Dfxs fault)

Originally I used my name as a user name, but got fed up with having to use tricks including "." and underlines to get it to work eg: Ian. Ian_Hull etc I used to play Rainbow six on the MSN zone (still do occasionally) and a group of us got fed up with all the antics of the kids that play there. As we where a bit older than the average we called ourselves "Dads Army" After the BBC TV comedy about the home guard in WW2. Private Pike was one of the characters. We also have a Capt Mainwaring, Cpl Jones, Sgt Wilson etc..The Clans dead now (probably), haven't heard from any of them for a few months, but the name stuck. Sometimes I ahave to use Private Pike DA to get it to work though (or DA Private Pike on the zone). [This message has been edited by Private Pike (edited 02-14-2001).]

Just out of interest how much resupply would normally take place in 30mins and during a battle? Behind the lines yes but isn't anything on a CM battlefield actually in the front line due to the scale.

SOP: Standard operating procedure (or at least it is here -UK laboratory)

Does anyone have any imformation on "Waterloo" by Breakaway games ? http://www.breakawaygames.com/waterloo.htm This game is to be based on the engine from Sid Meier's "Gettysburg" and "Antietam". The last news on the web site is over 6 months old. Did the game get cancelled or....? [This message has been edited by Private Pike (edited 02-07-2001).]

This does raise an interesting point. If new versions of software like Microsoft Word or The Geneamp software I use for work required the disk to be in the drive I would be seriously annoyed, but I am quite happy if game software comes with this restriction.

The most disappointing game I ever bought was "WARGAMER - NAPOLEAN 1813" from Empire (and I just noticed the typo in the title I copied from Empire.co.uk). It sounded very promising but on my machine it crashed every few minutes. Worse than that the campaign system didn't seem to work properly. I finally gave up when I tried a battle. Watching my routed cavalry charging backwards was enough to put me off completely. Has anyone had any luck with this game and is it worth the effort? A few years ago I played Fields of Glory (another Napoleonic wargame) and although flawed this 7-8 year old game was far better than "Wargame-1813"

Actually if I was in Stuart and had to face a JagdTiger then really close in is probably the safest place to be, training that 128mm gun with a fixed turret must be really slow. And as to the British not naming tanks after rebels what about the "Lee" and the "Cromwell". Wasn't "honey" a nickname for the Stuart as it was a real "Honey" to drive.

I'm not sure artillery was that difficult to get, any eye witness accounts I have read about the Normandy battles talk about the masive amounts of allied artillery. Allied soldier also seem to comment on the large numbers of German mortars

I find one use of carriers is to hide the presence of a Wasp or 2. If you have a swarm of carriers moving around I find PBEM oponents tend to ignore them after a while. It's then that you can move the wasp up. After it's first sting, If it survives and can get back into cover, any sight of the other carriers tends to lead to panic reactions, great fun to watch

Actually Von Mellenthin (Panzer battles, 1956)seems to agree that the invasion of Sicily by the Allied 15th Army Group under Alexander caused Hilter to halt Citadel At the time 15th AG was made up of US 7th Army (Patton)which consisted of US II corp (Bradley) and the British 8th Army (Monty) consisting of Br XXX corp (Leese) & Br XIII corp(Dempsey) "On 13 3uly, Field Marhals von Manstein and Kiuge were summoned to East Prussia, and Hitler informed them that Citadel must be called off immediately as the Allies had landed in Sicily; troops must be transferred from the Eastern Front to deal with the invasion. Manstein had not committed all his forces and was in favor of continuing the offensive as a battle of attrition; by smashing up Russian armored reserves In the Kursk salient we might forestall major offensives in other sectors. This situation should have been foreseen before Citadel was launched; we were now in the position of a man who has seized a wolf by the ears and dare not let him go. However, Hitler declared that the attack must stop forthwith." Von Mellenthin (Panzer battles, 1956) But by the 13th July it was already fairly accademic as on the 11th July the battle of Prokhorovka had finished the German chances of advancing much further and on the 12th July the Russians themselves had launched a massive counter-attack [This message has been edited by Private Pike (edited 01-10-2001).]

Move to Hull, we've had un-metered internet access since 1998 and an independent (and actually quite good) phone company, Kingston comunications (half owned by the local council). Kingston comunications are currently offering ADSL digital TV & internet (sadly not to my computer...yet). On the other hand I can think of a hundred other reasons not to move to Hull.

In terms of reviews what can be of concern (and this isn't aimed at any particular title) is the pressure games companies can bring to bear in terms of with-holding use of screen shots, previews and general information and all the other freebies like trips and "entertainment" from journalists who give bad reviews. This is perhaps more previlant in the music and film industry were journalist who give bad write-ups never get access to the "stars". It can become a form of self sensorship. In the light of this it's nice to see a major title get a slating.