Holman

Great to hear it!

Plus the CMx2 community will be making top-notch content soon. My CMBN folder has about 20 campaigns and close to 250 scenarios, the majority of which were made by the community. In fact many of the same people who made the "official" scenarios release new ones on a regular basis.

Dropbox with CM Helper (successor to H2HH) really makes PBEM management a breeze. I have six or seven games going, and I never have to remember anyone's email or even whose turn it is. CM Helper does all that for me.

The CMx2 engine is miles beyond the original CM games. It has become much more detailed both visibly and (especially) under the hood. For example, in CMBB, an infantry squad was treated as a mass blob; in CMx2 games, that squad is made of individual soldiers responding individually to circumstances. You can actually see the ones firing, the ones cowering, the ones moving, and the ones who haven't yet got the enemy in their sites reacting individually. It shouldn't be difficult to find reviews of CMBN and CMFI and their expansions. Reviews for CMRT will be coming soon, I'm sure. My capsule review: I've been playing WW2 wargames on computer and on the tabletop since the 1980s. While nothing is perfect, the latest CM engine is the most detailed, the most realistic, the most interesting, and the most satisfying wargame I've ever played. Purely for reasons of theater and content, I rate CMBN (with all the expansions) higher than CMRT and CMFI. But they are essentially the same game focusing on different parts of the war.

I just did a short unscientific test with some rifle squads and MG teams firing "Target" and "Target Light." Ammo usage for the latter was lower, but not by much: a German rifle squad used up its MG34 ammo in about six minutes with "Target" and about eight minutes with "Target Light." However, "Target Light" definitely works for tanks (to prevent main gun use) and mortars (significantly lowering rate of fire). That's the only use I've ever had for it in the game anyway.

I just ran 1.1.1, and the smiley icon now disappears when I close the program. Great!

We need banner and flag doodads!

Excellent! Bravo!

I notice that, in Win 8.1, CM Helper (and H2HH before it) leaves a string of happy faces down on the Task Bar when used. These apparently indicate the presence of incoming game turns, but they remain in place when CMH is closed. They disappear if moused over. This didn't happen with H2HH under Win 7. Bug or feature? (GREAT program, BTW. Thank you again, GAJ!)

If I were staring down a possibly-intact enemy tank with a pzfaust in my hand, I wouldn't wait either.

Would AA weapons have been moved forward with assaulting troops or held back in an actual air-defense role? Put another way, why didn't Germans always use them the way CM players surely will?

Is it possible to shift-click order the same mission for vastly different weapons (e.g. a 60mm mortar with a 3-minute wait and rocket artillery with an 11-minute wait)?

Huh? For tanks, Target vs. Target Light is the difference between using the main gun and using just machine guns.

I think touch objectives have disappeared all the way back to CMSF.

No, except by actual reconnaissance.

On the other hand, it might be the key mapping problem some have encountered (now solved). Look in the Tech Support sub-forum for the thread entitled "Keys to go to next unit/previous unit."

Right. Dropbox is the answer. As the games get more complex, the turn files won't be getting any smaller.

Thanks for the reply. Sounds good to me!

Great to see this! One question: is there no Refresh function in CM Helper?

When it comes down to it, I think a new "Target Carefully" command is asking for too much micromanagement. At the same time, I think it would be good for completely unsuppressed units to have an accuracy bonus of some sort when first opening up. It is entirely possible that they already do; I don't know that any tests have been done. It's true that a CMx2 rifle squad opening up on an unsuspecting enemy doesn't drop them all like a team of scoped snipers, but that's because a CMx2 rifle squad is not a team of scoped snipers.

I think units are lining up shots and judging range from the moment they spot the enemy, not just from the moment they're given a target order. There are usually several full seconds involved before the shooting starts, and I take this to be the amount of time trained soldiers with WW2 equipment would need to get about as good a shot as they're going to get. It's different for sharpshooters, of course, but then that's their job, and they do take longer between shots in the game. The basic fact is that the basic infantryman is not a sharpshooter. I actually don't know, btw, whether the game already models a first-shot accuracy bonus or not.

I don't think soldiers are being less accurate with a simple targeting command than they would be with some sort of Target Carefully order. Units firing from ambush have the benefit of not being suppressed, so their fire is about as accurate as it's going to get given the limitations of skill, training, and human eyeballs.

Oh my God. He's planning individual skins for every tank on the Eastern Front!

Absolutely. That's a tank that looks like it has a job to do.

What seems optimal for the disembodied god's-eye player would seem absurd to the soldiers involved. "Sgt. McKlowsky wants us to give his guys our tank? Like hell!" Even if it's the commander, I'm not sure that kind of thing was done in the heat of battle.