Holman

SturmSebber sez: But no one is asking for anything so outlandish. I guess what some of us hope for (humbly so, as BTS has already given us so much!) is the inclusion of just a little more to make the 44-45 European battles more fully possible in CMAK. People seem to want the King Tiger; I myself am more interested in some of the late war British tanks that didn't make it onto the CMAK CD. In any case, no one expects BTS to pour a lot of time and energy into an update for CMAK now that they've begun work on CMx2. But if they find that bundling a few of the more common late-war AFVs into the 1.02 patch won't set them back too far, we would all be grateful I'm sure. The idea would be to make CMAK more expansive at the lowest cost in BTS' resources. Obviously this is not a demand, or a petition, or a rant. It's just a suggestion.

Hedgerows we have already: "tall hedge" in CMAK.

junk2drive sez: I'll be first in line with my money when the next CM comes out! But an expansion pack, with all the new content necessary to justify it, would push back CMx2 quite a bit, and BTS has said they're against that. My modest proposal--and I'm only repeating what others have requested--asks only for a bit of patch and port work.

The whole question of including units (or not) by strict historical standards has been talked about a lot here. BTS has stated a design philosophy that says, "If it wasn't there at that time, we won't include it." (As for that JgPz VI in CMBB, I just don't know.) But I hope that they will moderate this stance at least a little for the sake of hypothetical match-ups. After all, even though (to make up a possible example) no King Tiger ever stumbled across a British Airborne Engineer Platoon engaged in ferrying Free French infantry across a river with assault boats, there was no "lock" in CMBO that prevented you from concocting such a scenario. The units were in the right theater at the right time, and that was close enough. Because CMAK is the perfect engine for doing Northwestern Europe scenarios *as well as* the Med, at least until CMx2 comes along, I hope that BTS will consider giving a little leeway beyond strict theater boundaries. An "historically unrestricted" mode for scenario designers would be a great addition and would give CMAK more legs in the market. (Word of mouth and reviews would be able to say that the game now simulates *all* of the fighting between Germany, Italy, and the western Allies, at least after Dunkirk.) We know that BTS has limited time and energy for this. But maybe the following steps wouldn't be too much effort for the gains involved...? 1) Add a fully unrestricted mode to the scenario maker so that any unit of any side in the game could be added to a map after its date of first appearance. (No more hunting for just the right month to find paratroopers.) 2) Leave this unrestricted mode *out* of the quick battle generator. This would cut down on completely rampant ahistoricism. 3) In a patch, add at least the most important missing units to CMAK that have already been created for CMBB and CMBO. Older models, even the lower poly-count ones from CMBO, would be fine with everyone I'm sure. Modders could take care of the skins. *If* the ballistic data for a new/old unit's gun is too much to work up, well, we can live without that unit. But at least some of what we'd like to see probably wouldn't be that hard to do. 4) No Maus, no JS-3, no North Koreans or Confederates. 5) All of us send a sincere note of personal thanks to the BTS team for making our wargaming dreams come true! Those who are able, bake them a pie. Or send beer. Humbly Submitted, Martyr

(Original AP Photo caption:) Stealthily, taking every precaution, US Marines creep up and toilet paper the neighborhood Stuart light tank...

One of the great details about Skorzeny's disguised teams is this: American soldiers became suspicious when they saw U.S. jeeps carrying four passengers. Jeeps being in such plentiful supply, and Americans loving to drive themselves, U.S. troops almost *never* piled four men in a jeep.

The Maus! They've found it! Woo-hoo!

Thanks, Andrew! Yep. Been around since the beta CMBO beta demo. Why, when I was your age we didn't have all these fancy-schmancy full-color polygonal modslut whatnots! We were lucky to get vector graphics in 4-color EGA. You could see the pixels like bricks on a cat! Sometimes we had to make do with Pattons dressed up like Panthers and filmed through gauze to hide the cardboard! And you know what? We were *grateful!* grumble grumble grumble...

Andrew, First off, I love all your mods. They're great! But a question: I just downloaded the Commonwealth Uniform vol 2 pack and the Commonwealth Winter Uniform pack from CMMods, but I find that I still don't have winter gear for the Brits themselves. Canadians, New Zealanders, etc. all have gloves and jerkins in winter, but the boys from GB are still freezing. The readme says that the Brits should be included. Am I missing something? (I installed normally, just overwriting everything.)

Well, if you're asking if the game can apply a shellhole mod after a tank is hit, the answer is no. That's a game-engine limitation. If you're asking about a standard mod that shows shellholes, it depends on how deep you want them. I doubt that you could create a shellhole that goes all the way through the armor except in certain rare areas of the vehicle's model (such as on the armor skirts). If you're just doing shell scars on the armor, or holes that don't try to be transparent, they should be fine. The only problem is that the same exact shell hole will show up on every tank of that model in play. Some people will dislike that effect.

Did somebody throw a molotov and miss?

Thanks, Matt! (refreshing now... now... now... now... now... now... now... now... now... now... ...)

I seldom use formations as such. I generally send a few scouts (half-squads) out ahead of the main force, but I let terrain dictate where I position my squads. This applies both when in place and when on the move: I plot paths that give maximum cover while still keeping some distance between units. Sometimes you have to make tough choices. I always try to keep my squads within supporting distance of each other. For this reason I'd prefer a two-up, two-back formation if I had to pick one.

The character is J.O.E. Vandeleur!

I have always been a stickler for keeping up with my games, but I just use a legal pad. Each game gets a line which lists start date, opponent, scenario, side, and final score. Now I wish I had used Excel, at least! (I don't bother to record games against the AI.) I also keep a list of every scenario that I have played or even just opened, and from which side. This enables me to be certain about double-blind games.

Cool Breeze, A big question! First off, I guess it should be said that being a history major does not lock one into being a historian. Many history majors go on to fields like law, policy, and a jillion other things (business, accounting, folk singing, etc.). What a history major *will* teach you (or should) is a sophisticated, sceptical way of looking at events and causality. But if you're asking about being a professional historian, that's a tough call. The question isn't really "how much do you love history?" so much as "how much do you love the kind of work that historians do?" That's a question that you won't be able to answer until you've taken some good history classes and (more importantly) met some good history professors. Most historians are university professors, and it's a special kind of life. Imagine months of reading, teaching classes, reading, attending meetings, teaching classes, doing committee work, researching, reading, writing, attending more meetings, and more reading. If that appeals to you--and it only appeals to a small segment of the population--you may want to pursue the work. It will mean going to graduate school for a Ph.D. after college, which is its own particular kind of h*ll. But, again, the thing to do is go to college and cultivate those history classes. Talk to your professors, and also talk to history grad students (who may very well be your teachers for the first couple of years). Ask them what to read. As for the difficulty of making a living, that depends on the university job market. It used to be better than it is now, and it will almost certainly be tough to get the particular job you want. But if you find that you love the stuff, it will be the only thing that you really want to do. Good luck!

I see lots of misses. For instance, in a battle I've got going right now, my side's planes (I won't call them "mine!") have made five attacks with two kills. Rockets often bracket an armored target without harming it. Bombs often go long. I consider it a lucky day when a plane actually destroys enemy vehicles. Now attacks against infantry are another story, and near-misses very often pin or even panic foot soldiers. This is accurate, I think: infantry feared air attacks all out of proportion to their effectiveness.

I'm still in favor of limiting the title for the sake of clarity. I only consider someone a "historian" who researches and writes history to an acceptable standard of integrity. Given the high standards currently imposed by the academy upon itself, I see no reason not to let universities and their associated institutions define those standards. The fact that some historians do not think well of some other historians, and vice versa, does not undermine the structure of peer review. In fact it validates it. (On an analogous note, I can believe that some doctors are quacks while still respecting the judgement of medical schools in awarding M.D.'s.) After all, it's not as if this denies anyone some reward that they would otherwise gain. You don't get rich practicing history, y'know. In any case, there is (or should be) no shame in being an amateur or an enthusiast as opposed to a professional historian. One thing visible in the publishing world today is the blurring of the lines between journalists (who create records of current events), historians (who evaluate past events as well as the records of past events), and pundits (who spin events by masquerading as either of the above).

There are many different levels of historian, to be sure. Their relevance depends on what you're trying to understand. For instance, someone who is well-studied in the design, organization, and employment of German Panzer divisions will help you to grasp the intricacies of Operation Barbarossa. But that person may have very little to teach you about political parties in Weimar, the economy of the 1930s, or the role of childhood education in the rise of Nazism (all of which may have ultimately more to "do" with Barbarossa than Guderian ever did).

I consider myself a(n) history student, not a historian. My education is in English, all the way to ABD. But my field of study has been 16th and 17th century religious literature, and this immersed me in a good deal of historical scholarship. My wife, on the other hand, *is* a historian. She has the dissertation and doctorate to prove it. She definitely does do research, although unfortunately it does not involve tanks. As for things WW2, I am definitely an enthusiast, and I try to read the most intelligent books and articles I can. My WW2 library consists of about fifty books, hand-picked, none of them by Stephen Ambrose. I've probably read half again as many more. I'll agree about the hangup. But there are matters of evidence, method, argument, and the "history of history" that one just cannot master on one's own. It really does take a serious education to make a serious historian.

Actually, one Maus *was* shipped to the desert war, but it promptly settled into the sand and was never seen again. The tank specialists involved were flabbergasted, and of course the Fuerher was not pleased--reports of the incident were sealed and the technicians handed over to the Gestapo. The Bedouins still tell tales by firelight of the "Mouse that Roared," a massive beast slouching towards Bethlehem dripping blood and leaving wide tracks in its wake. Anthropologists dismiss these narratives as fanciful expressions of tribal rivalry. But some nights, when the moon is full on the desert wadi, and all but the houris are quiet, you can still hear a "Clank--Clank--Clank" of thick metal on sand, the sound carried on the winds of the high Sirocco, while round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away. And that's why it's not in the game.

"Motorized" means that the unit's division is normally equipped with trucks for long-range movement. This kind of movement is beyond the scale of CM, however, so the trucks (and their cost in points) are not included. The reasons CM *calls* some formations motorized is that motorized divisions might have a different force structure than mechanized units (which have halftracks instead of trucks) or leg infantry. You might have different kinds of squads or different supporting elements in a motorized unit even if you don't use the trucks in battle.

Clearly this is further proof that BTS planned to include a "French Resistance" portion of the game complete with eavesdropping cafe waiters, coded messages in cigarette papers, and daring midnight crossings of the Pyrenees. The People Demand Lucie Aubrac! (Continues search for wav file recording of "I know NUT-thing!")

LOL! How did you ever find that one? It would be great for notifying you when you've typed in the wrong password.

This thread demands a plug for Harry Turtledove's novel "The Guns of the South," by the way...