Midnight Warrior

The mechanics of a "target point" could be very similarly to the current "ambush point". Select Target Point comamd and then click on any fixed point somewhere on the map and the target point sysmbol could appear. The target point could then be used by the Hunt command just as if it real a bonafide target. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

Just to make the small minority just a tad bit larger I'd like to put in my vote for an ACW version (and a WW1 version too). ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

I set up a scenario with air support and it appeared (froma quick look)that there is no viusal representation of the aircraft dureing an air attack but only the audio and the damage that it causes. Is this correct? If so, I would like to suggest that it would be cool to add aircraft visual imagery to a patch or CM 2. Step 1 would be to incorporate a simulated gun camera. This would simply require scrolling the normal camera along the attacking aircraft's flight trajectory and adding some tracers and such. The camera scroll rate seems fast enough to support this. An aircraft traveling at 300kts would cover roughly 10km/min. The aircraft would then only require about 6-10 secs to fly across a typical map. The current fast camera slew rate seems able to support that fast of rate. Also, since an attacking aircraft would be typically diving toward a ground stabilized aimpoint (for strafing and/or bombing) the gun camera view would not need to scroll so fast as the forward looking view but would rather zoom in on the target until the aircraft pulls up. This could generate some really exciting imagery. Step 2 would be to add a 3D rendered model of the support aircraf (as it goes whizzing by). The AAA fire tracers could also be shown. Also, didn't the US airfroce instigate forward air controllers in WWII? If so, it might be a good idea to add a aircraft spotter that acts much like an artillery spotter only for aircraft. Also, observation aircraft might be cool. I don't know if they were used a an air FAC in WWII for Close air support but it might be neat in a operation to have one battle be a air recce artillewry prep before the ground troops engage. Finally, (just for fun!!!) a follow a shell/bomb camera view might be cool too for off board & aerial fire support. This camera mode is avialable in the SGI 3D naval game, Fighting Steel. It would be fun to be able to have a plot of land for rendered off board arty pieces, rendered aircraft for low, medium and bombing runs, or a 3d rendering of a ship for naval gunfire support and be able to see them fire and follow the shells in to the target. The terrain between the off board patch of terrain to the main ground gaming area could be the normal off map blank terrain. The only purpose in this other than just for fun is to give the gamer a sense of the distances involved in the off board fire. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

And to keep the wargame flavor you could have a firefighters in the battle of Britain sceanrio where they are putting out fire during a bombing raid on London (or German firefighters against Allied bombers).

When driving through the country side you start visualizing what real fields, trees, hills, etc would look like on a CM screen. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

In CM4 we might find even more esoteric modes of 2 wheeled transportation like the Dutch bicycle units. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

Never Mind. The problem majicicaly fixed itself. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

The good news: Got my CM today! The Bad News: My audio sounds like the chipmunks. It like it is clocking out the Wav files too fast. Everything is too high pitched. Didn't have problem on demo version. P.S. I have downloaded the patch 1.1 but I don't think that caused the problem. I'm not quite ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

I thought that in addition to the new CM forums it might be nice to have a CM upgrade wish list forum. It would be cool if there were pfixed topics in the forum for CM potential upgrades, e.g. general scenario buidling toold, map building tools, new grapgics and special effects, new vehicles/units/weapons, new terrain feature, new command & control features, new game engine features, ne wAI functionality,etc. The house rule would be one suugestion per post so that forum members could rate each suggestion (similar to the way you can rate scenarios on TGN) and have it automatically tallied The grading scale could be for example 1-5 with 1. Must have! 2. Cool 3. Nice to Have but could live without it 4 Yawn, not ineterested 5. Only if you can turn the #$%@& thing off! Then it would be cool if BTS staff could post (at the leisure!) a status for each suggestion, e.g. planned for CM2, considered for CM3, unrated, too hard to do, etc. this might help BTS better prioritize what the CM community really wants. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

My wish list. 1. I'd like to see a really user friendly map editor where you can load in a scanned map and then build the game map over the scanned map using it as a guide. It would be also neat if the map buidler would provide a contour line tool that you could trace contour lines and the map builder would automatically compute the terrain elvations. 2. I would like to see an area LOS tool that allowa one to see LOS from a overhead view in all directions. What would even be cooler is if you could select two view points and the line of sight map would show both views with the overlap highlighted. This would be useful in laying down fields of fire. 3. I think it would be neat if there was a map annotation tool (one for each side). This would especially be useful for very large maps where you could overlay unit sector boundaries and moves orders, phase lines etc. 4. Better buildings with better interiors and framed see-out windows. (Also interior tanks views with persisope views would be cool) 5. Better damage models and graphics for buildings. 6. Better Commnad and control rules. Actually I think some sort of variant of the old AH tactical card game, Upfront, could be adapted to CM to abstreactly model command and control, moral, trainning, doctrine, personality characteristics, national differences, command ability, and workload factors issues. A "cards" option could be invoked that would be additional limits (due the above factors) that each unit could do in addition to the physical limits currently modeled. It could also be used to add more color, scenario variation, and support a bit of role playing (e.g. getting lost). Unlike the old Upfrant game the cards would be integrated into the CM engine so that the actual physical layout, geometris, and line of sights would not be abstracted (only the psychological factors. 7. Individual soldier zoom box. When a unit is selected a zoom insert box could be selected that shows each soldier in the unit and his status. 8. It would be cool to be able to see aircraft strafing runs from the pilot view. (Hopefully this is in CM1). 9. Presettable/relocatable cameras location with hot key selection (e.g. function keys) 10. The ability to import CM scenarios from a higher level game and to export CM gake results (including movie) back to the higher level game. 11. The ability to export game stats (e.g. individual unit kills, etc)to a spreadsheet or word document or an auto after action report generator. 12. Programmble AI decision policies and programmable event engine. 13. Team play mode 14. Beyond CM4: Pacific War, WWI, Korean, and Vietnam war variants. 15. Auto rauting mode where you can specify where a unit needs to go (with a time on target) and it figures out the best way to get there. 16. A variant that depicts American civil war small unit engagements (example skirmishers a company of infantry with a squadron of cavalry and a couple of artillery peieces)Note: This should not be so much of a stretch for the game engine and graphics as compared to the big battles. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>"The turning point in the war wasn't the Battle of Britian, Staligrad, Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, or any other land based battle. The turning point was Pearl Harbor. We may not have even committed troops to the ETO if this event hadn't happened <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Churchill agrees with this view. In his history of WWII he cites America's entry in the war as the event that assured the salvation of Britain. Interestingly enough he cites the Nazi/Russian Non agreesion pack as the cause of WWII. As such he never shoewd much sysmpathy for Stalin's plea for a second front in that he thought that Stalin had gotten what he deserved by cozying up with the Nazi's to begin with. Even so no one can deny that the war in Russia had a critical role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. As for Germany not finishing off Britain, Hitler thought that the U boats would do the trick so that the breaking of the Enigma code and the development of airborne radar (and those two British blokes that invented the Magnetron) played a decisive role in undermining Hitler's game plan to knock out Britain. Could Russia have won the war without the West? If the Germans had gone on the defensive and fallen back in '43 to more defendable positions it could have been a stalemate. I would think a prologned stalemate might have led to a negotiated peace between the Germans and a lone Russia. A stalemate would have been a win for Hitler in that he would still be sitting on all of most of Europe. In my opinion Allied victory was an uncomfortable close call with little margin for error (and in a close call everything tends to counts. And in particular good luck (or rather I believe, Divine Providence)played an awfully large role in many of Allied Operations from those Dauntless dive bombers catching Nagumo with his "pants down" at Midway to the Weather at D-Day and good fortune of the Enigma machine falling into Allied hands. On the other hand if the Western democracies had done their duty back in the 30's and had marched into the Rhineland when Hitlr occupied it and/or hadn't doubl crossed Austria and Chechoslavakia then the whole history of the world could have been different. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

Count mee in too! ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns

It might be nice to have some programmable camera locations too. For instance they could be selected by hitting the special function keys (F1 thru F12). The location, altitude, and direction of each camera would be then be the last wwhich it was dragged to. That way just stepping through keys F1 thru F12 could give a quick visual tour of the battlefield. For example F1 could be programmed a high alt top view, F2 to be the view from hill 123, F3 the view from the bad guys side looking back, etc. ------------------ March To The Sound Of The Guns