snagdad

I've got to admit that lately I've been checking this board more often looking for news of the second coming of combat mission !

Interesting thread throughout. Drifting a bit, I saw a mention a ways back of Dieppe as an example of a great military blunder. It reminded me of a book by Ralph Ingersol, Top Secret, written in the mid forties. Ingersol fought in North Africa and was (IIRC) a mid level intelligence officer in Europe before and during D-Day period. According to him, the American contingent considered the Dieppe raid a qualified success when considered as a reconaisance in force. They landed, they stayed and manouvered until morning, they left. Security and intelligence were flawed, to be sure, but even so, again according to Ingersol, who claims to represent the American military opinion in the pre D-Day planning phase, Dieppe could be viewed as more of a success than failure.

great thread. if I remember anything from the one book I read on chaos theory it is that small differences in input conditions make for very large differences in the results. hence the impossibility (?) of truly accurate forecasts of say, the weather. the resolution of the models cannot and will not ever be able to sufficiently pin down initial conditions in order to predict outcomes accurately. meeks postulates that someday the machines will be able to do this, even encompassing the area of human emotions and psychology. it is a scary thought; at that point we won't have to play the football game because the outcome will be predictable (the analysis to include momentum swings, home field advantage, the cornerback's domestic problems, etc etc). anyone ever see Gattica ? not an exact example but it catches the flavor of the fear. maybe I am a kindred spirit with the original flat earth types, but I don't believe this will come to pass. even more, if it does come to pass I hope I am not around.

hey john, off the subject, but on your recommendation a while back I bought the book Angel in the Whirlwind. A truly excellent read and a great book. Thanks for the suggestion.

I loaded the v.1 sound extensions(?) and they work great! Thanks very much for the suggestion. Here's a question(or actually several) - the new dual 500 mhz machines (not that I can afford one): will a game like CM or others really take advantage of the dual processors ? Doesn't his imply special coding to use the power of this arrangement ? I fear that the dual processors is Apple's very short term fix to not having a greater than 500 mhz processor available at the moment. When a new series of processors does come then these machines will be ill supported dinasaurs ? I am concerned about: comments by the G.O.D. people about Apple support for gaming, the lack of premium graphics capability or expandibility, and the lack of progress with faster processors. Is Apple going to squander the huge leg up that the iMac gave us because of lagging in technology ? It does seem that the games drive the technology somewhat in the consumer market.

as far as catching fire, tiger, woods is about on par. [This message has been edited by snagdad (edited 08-04-2000).]

45 or so, spirit is willing but the flesh growing weaker

I also read "Company Commander" by MacDonald (mentioned above by another poster) awhile ago, great ground level description of the GI's lot. I always enjoy books by Carlo D'Este - Decision in Normandy, a Patton biography, a book about Anzio I don't have yet. D'Este's Normandy book is a very clear headed and well researched book about the whole scene, the relations amongst Eisenhower, Monty, Bradley, and the rest of them. Great read. Also a book called "Top Secret" by Ralph Ingersol (I think) and other books by him. He is a period author (the books are from the late forties early fifties). In "Top Secret" he gets into the relationships between the Brits and US, its great stuff.

So I'm playing the (wonderful) little scenario by Wild Bill Wilder based on the final scenes of SPR. I've fought the German Armor and Infantry to a standstill and all the flags are flying American. Miller's group of six are anchoring the line and all are alive. About two or three turns from the end an American plane drops a direct hit on the building that Miller & group are in, wiping out the lot. I still get the victory, but what a way to end it ! C'est la Guerre !

yes, this is interesting. I went on vacation a few weeks back and upon returning, it took me some days before I would start playing CM again. It's because it can be so tiring; if I start after the kids are in bed I will be up until well past midnight. Moreover, playing the game itself is tiring due to the concentration level. And finally, there is that sense of losing your men and causing so much destruction. Myst was the first game that ever awed me on the computer; Amber was the first game that actually scared me, and CM is an order of magnitude beyond these in a lot of ways. I look ahead to where the hardware is going, before too long we'll have a helmet to put on for a virtual environment and the realism will go up a few notches. I wonder at what point it will get too real. At any rate, I'm back playing. It is a game, or a simulation if you will, and it is a great one. Any other software I've got doesn't really interest me at this point.

well, tomorrow early we leave for 5 days for a family reunion type deal. I'm taking some patches for yet another attempt at quitting smoking. I wish I had some sort of patch for the CM withdrawl that will set in tomorrow before noon...

lusername: If you are going to correct other's punctuation you should check your own posts for spelling and grammar. Look at your "weasal" post (while tempting, this is not commenting on the post itself, rather I am trying to point out to you where to look). Try Webster's for how to spell weasel. Also, in your headlong rush for clever palaver I am sure you meant to say "driving around in a weasel in starched cammies" as opposed to "driving around a weasal in starched cammies" which has a totally different meaning. Do you pal around with weasals in starched cammies ??

plus 1 with bases, because I find my nose on the screen otherwise.

I see three things here that seem to make intuitive and perhaps historical sense, and seem, to my ignorant mind, relatively non hard to program. First, the smoke as currently modeled is perfect? it immediately denies all LOS and continues to do so for some period of time despite any and all weather conditions. Perhaps its effect on LOS should be a variable. LOS at first glance (multiple puns ahead) seems to be like pregnancy, you either are or you aren't, but actually physical point to point LOS can be modified by several factors (fog, night, etc.) Why not smoke as a variable value also, affected by wind, rain, etc. Second, it does seem logical that if an attacking tank gets scared enough to pop smoke it should back away at a high rate of speed to somewhere where the crew can clean up the mess on the floor. Finally, and come on, really, no TC is going to swivel his main gun away from known armored targets to blast barely armed tank crews. Maybe the fix is no turret rotation away from last threat until a new motorized threat is realized. and I do say motorized as opposed to armored because halftracks and trucks and so on are tempting targets to TCs. a problem of course is infantry tank weapons; if I'm a TC and I somehow see some guy pointing a bazooka at me I'm gonna rotate to try and get him before he gets me. but the game already has reconition rules for infantry where at some point bazookas and schrecks are recognized (which could lift the no turret turn). We finally get to basic infantry with their mills bombs and fausts, but...c'est la guerre !

to all, as far as the tightness of the barrage when LOS exists, historically (and this shows up in the game) the battery would fire a few targeting rounds initially and the spotter would report and adjust (forward 100 yards, left 50 yards, etc.) before the main barrage using all guns. Also, it was not unusual for one or more guns to have erred in coordinates so their shots would be significantly off target, i.e. 9 guns in the battery would be on or close to target and one gun significantly long or (worse) short. The spotter would call for sequential firing to identify and correct the off gun(s). None of this is possible without LOS, hence the "looser" pattern when no LOS. Amazingly well modeled in the game, as is most of the content.