patboivin

Demo CDs make good coasters...

Lucky bugger. It took a MONTH to crawl from the U.S. to Canada.

LOL! I can't stop laughing, good thing I wasn't drinking anything while I read that post. I have to wipe the tears out of my eyes. Just picturing someone with a bucket over their head... LOL It's posts like this that keep me coming back.

Tiger, I don't know how much work you put into it, but your graphic seems to show four women with arms in the air. Four fire elementals maybe? It can't be easy to mod fire, though. Maybe it's just the picture you posted, I imagine the flames must be moving. I have always been impressed by your mods, Please keep up the good work.

I think you're right, because in Cheneux I keep trying to place a halftrack behind a roadblock, to give it "hull down" status, but the halftrack keeps panicking and reverses away from the roadblock. It prefers the reverse slope behind it. This tells me that roadblocks provide NO COVER. Be careful.

OK, I re-did the test, this time six 240mm (or almost same if not available for both Allies and Axis) per side. After seven turns of constant pounding and I would say about ten direct hits against the bridge (and probably that many nearby), part of the large stone bridge collapsed. Sounds like pounding it with an 88mm gun uses up fewer resources than targeting a bridge with artillery, since it took twelve artillery observers @ 240mm or above to destroy the thing. BTW I noticed you can't place a bullseye on parts of a bridge that is above water. You seem to need "solid ground" to place the target. [This message has been edited by patboivin (edited 09-04-2000).]

I wanted to be able to do it to both sides, that way we would get a different OOB every time. Probably a silly idea.

I am really naive, I thought that some of the veteran posters here weren't posting as much because they were busy playing CM. It's sad to see good people go, because we always need good people to compensate for the bad. Where there is no light the shadows creep.

Just for fun I did a test, a large stone bridge survived ten turns of hits from ten artillery spotters, caliber ranging from 100mm to 240mm. So it looks like those large stone bridges cannot be blown. The wooden bridge only lasted one turn.

I don't even know what Sudden Strike is, no time to go shopping for games, CM fills my gaming requirements quite nicely thank you.

I played some of the scenarios multiple times now, but sometimes wonder what it would be like if the units were somewhat different. I know this will sound strange, but how about letting us give *each side* an extra 25, 50, 100%? We could give one side +25%, and the other +100%, to change the scenarios a little. For people who want busy maps, they could allocate +100% to each side, and the game engine would allocate a few units on both sides randomly. This would work in any scenario. What do you think of this idea? (If it's stupid please shoot it down). Regards, Pat.

Missing jewel case. Sheesh! That has to be a flame. Can't you go to your local CD store and buy a pack of ten jewel cases for 2 bucks?

OK, kudos to all the mod people out there, esp. Tiger. Now I have a (minor) problem: The tanks look ten times better than the infantry! It almost seems like they were taken from different games. I don't know how to do mods, is it much harder to do a mod for infantry than for vehicles?

Stupidest thing I ever did was spend points on a heavy mortar for a scenario that ended up being a heavy fog scenario. I had this mortar crew lumbering about, with a totally useless piece of artillery: In the fog they couldn't see far enough to reach minimum range.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Hans: Question: the price for these is 123 for the Canuk vs 144 American Is that a minor oops or is there a reason? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I noticed it too, but didn't tell anyone. This kind of knowledge can come in handy!

Not sure, all I have is a military strategic map like they sell at the Airborne Museum in Oosterbeek and black and white pictures in an old book. I am looking at an aerial picture taken on 6 Sept. 1944 and at one point, the tracks were much lower than surrounding terrain, and this in effect created "walls" on either side, perfect for an ambush. It's where the train yard is, before the bridge that goes above the train yard if you are heading toward Arnhem. Looks something like this: ___.................................._____ ......|............................| ......|_______________| I don't know if this is going to show up properly when posted to the forum. (no it didn't, the engine truncates blank spaces! I am using dots instead, maybe that will work). It may not seem high but remember in that "trough" there are at least three train tracks side by side. So the gully if I can call it that is very wide, and the walls look like a major obstacle to overcome, if people wanted to try climbing them. Then, after the train yard, the train tracks appear to rise as they turn a little away from the river, and soon there is a road going under them. It looks like you were correct to place them higher than surrounding terrain, they look like if they were on an ASL map they would be one level higher than surrounding terrain. I haven't been there, I wish I could. I imagine things must have changed a lot, though. I wish there was a way to model a vertical surface in the map editor, i.e. tell the editor "OK between this square and that one, there is a 3 level difference, but that difference is not a slope, it is vertical." We could model all sorts of walls, ditches, dikes, etc. with that. I have to say again you did well with the placement of the houses, because when I look at the photos, some blocks had at least twenty houses on each side of the narrow streets, all packed together. I am reminded of pictures I saw of houses in the Netherlands that had a beam sticking out of their front façade, so people could hoist their furniture to the second floor. The houses were too narrow to bring the furniture upstairs from the inside. Anyway, long post, but I spent hours peering over these aerial photos and the strategic map, it's not easy to model a city that doesn't have any straight roads using an editor that wants everything to fit on a square grid. [This message has been edited by patboivin (edited 08-30-2000).] [This message has been edited by patboivin (edited 08-30-2000).]

I don't know if you really need a fast computer, I've been playing on a Pentium Pro laptop with a bare-bones video card (in fact I have no idea what video card is in this thing, it's not documented anywhere). As for the Staut, it was in fact called a "Stuart" (it was a typo I think). It's a little tank with a 37mm canon if I remember correctly, the neat thing about it is how fast its turret can turn, it puts larger tanks to shame in that respect. They blow up real good though, when you can hit them. Jagdpanthers (JagdPanzer V) are good for that. The Allied (British, Canadian) Churchill tanks are really tough, I am playing a game now and a Tiger and a Churchill have been firing at each other now for two turns, each one scoring multiple hits, but the only result is that they both immobilized each other. All the other hits just bounce off. Very entertaining.

FYI, in one of the William Shatner books, the Borg and the Romulans form an unholy alliance. Watch out for Borg with a cloaking device!

I thought of saying: Put 'em in a circle facing outward, like Bison protecting their young. It will give you a 360 degree arc of fire!! Put them on top of a hill and you're set!

Besides, you can't change the point / armour values for units, can you? You can only change the appearance of troops and vehicles.

OK so I'm dating myself, but why not put some Cylons in there while you're at it. "By your command." Talk about slow, useless troops. Laser beams that are so slow people can dodge them. I see a trend in Hollywood TV shows! How would you mod phaser rifle fire, I doubt that it could be done. What about the vehicles in the microgame G.E.V., while you're at it? Floating armoured vehicles, infantry with power armour. I'm not going to suggest anyone model an Ogre, I don't think the game scale would allow it.

FYI, I looked up "Bogged" (because one of my tanks is currently bogged) and it says: see Status. There is no "Status" entry in the index. What I wanted to know was... if a unit is bogged, any chance it might become "un-bogged" at some point during a game?

I live in Halifax, took about a month. It was a l-o-n-g month. After a while, some of our neighbours to the south were feeling sorry for us.

I've been working on a map of Arnhem too, only to discover after a while that I lost track of the directions, part of my map is twisted. Now I have to start over! I'm going to use a grid for sure, this time. I love the map for Arnhem14, apart from the railroad track being level with the town, the designer did a great job with lining up the buildings. There are hardly any straight roads in Arnhem! Compromise, compromise. Why do we always have to compromise? But he kept the flavour of the place better than I managed to do it, I think. I tried to stick too closely to the strategic map.

We have it in Canada, if you can afford it I definitely recommend it. I love it! No more modems.