Midnight Warrior

Cool! Thanks for the info!

Aside from the nifty mountain backdrops (which are really cool!) does anyone know if CMAK will actualy have higher elevation levels to allow for the mountainous terrain in Italy?

I agree. The advantage of a campaign is not so much that one can rise through the ranks and become a general. It is more can you live to fight another day (and eventually live to go home). That is what is hard to simulate in a wargame. Just how willing am I to die so somebody else can live to go home? In a sceanrio you try to win. In a campaign you try to survive.

Interesting thread! I agree with most of what has been said. Just a few thoughts (ramble). 1. The "lack of realism" is not all due to the game but to the scenarios. It seems that scenario designers go to great lengths to make scenarios balanced. In real life the "scenario designers" go to great lengths to make them grossly unbalanced (whenever they can). But who wants to play a grossly unbalanced scenario? 2. It seems to me that there is the "science of wargaming" and the "art of wargaming". I think that folks that make CM do an most excellent job of finding the right mix between these. The science, in that they sweat the details to get those things "right" that CAN be gotten right in that they ARE able to simulate as accurately as possible things like fire rates, ranges, organizations, uniforms, etc). The parts that they can't simulate they cover well in the art of wargaming (e.g. WEGO vs click fest, etc, TACAI, etc). I personally enjoy wargamming in one sense as a history buff and another sense from an purely aesthetics standpoint in that a good wargame tells a good yarn with lots a high drama (and bit of comic relief too) from an uniquely interactive format that you can't get from simply watching a movie or reading a book. 3. Also, it is in fact a "game" too in that it can test your problem solving skills and your cunning (or lack there of). It also sometimes tests your character as well to see if you are a good winner (don't gloat) and loser (don't whine) or can with some modicum of both diligence dignity finish a scenerio that you blew horribly from the getgo and be satisfied with making the best of a bad situation. 4. It is an excuse to interact with similarly minded (but very diverse) people whom you'd normally never encounter and pontificate on forums like this about interesting topics like this thread and see how horribly your brilliant posts get egregiously missunderstood, woefully under appreciate, and ignominiously flamed. 5. It is both exciting and fascinating to see how resourceful those cleaver game designers are in further pushing the state of the art in both this art and scinece in the next version they realease (yeah CMAK!). 6. As far as realism goes, the only thing I have done personally that even closely resembles "real combat" is abit of Civil War reenacting. Now the only real threat to life reencting is having one of the over wieght, out of shape, over age soldiers having a heat stroke wearing a wool uniform in 100 degree weather. However, I remember doing one campaign where we we were in the back woods and there was nothing modern to be seen. Along the dirt road was a endless line of fedaral troops in blue loitering around amidst the rustic backdrop waiting for orders. Messengers were scurring from one commander to another on horseback. Suddenly, just for moment it was WOW! I was there! Just for a moment. Well, I think that you can have that same experience in a well made wargame too. What I would call a reality flash. It's like something happens in the game that makes you say. Wow! that happened just like in that book I read. Or you have this "Oh! Now I understand why (fill in the blank)". Now the better the wargame masters this mix of art and science the more likly this experience will happen. (Your not going to experience it a Panzer General like in a CM) The point I guess I struggling here to make here (if anybody has made it this far in my post) is that realism isn't this digital you either have it or you don't thingie. There are shades of grey of realism and momentary flashes. Personally, I think I would prefer peg my fun meter with a momentary flash of realism here and there (albeit vicarious and virtual) over a steady diet of real thing (reality get sold fast!). After all, most of us have already had our fill of reality bringing home the bread all day. When we log on to our computers in the evening or wee hours of the night a flash of reality here and there is quite sufficient! (end of ramble)

Make it 4!

Cool! Another neat feature might be to make it be able automatically create a list of any mods that it couldn't find for a given scenario. That way it could cue one what mods he needs to go find and download.

Another thought. The scenario manager could also have a list of mods that go with each scenario so with one mouse click you could select a scenario and load in mods that go with it.

That sounds pretty cool! I was thinking that when you have the Mod Manager up and running you might add a scenario manager function. It would allow you to sort through your CM scenarios based on chronology, nationalities, type of engagements, if you have played it or not, point size, etc. A selected scenario could then be dumped in the CM scenario folder by the scenario manger with a AAA prefix added to its file name so that it would be at the top of the scenario list when CM is run. It could also be removed and the original file name restored.

I have attempted to do this from time to time but I find that it would quickly became too tedious and time consuming to continue. I have been hoping that sometime in the future games such as CM would incoporate some sort of way of dumping a .txt file that could be read by EXCEL or some other speadsheet that would capture some of this kind of minute game stat information. However, I doubt that this will happen anytime soon in that the game developers have bigger fish to fry than helping gamers keep detailed records of their games. However, by using a method similar to the one described above, it might be possible to minimize the time and effort required to develop this type of record keeping in that it would only require the addition of software to perform the data capture and .txt file dumps and would not require the development of embedded GUI's in the game to view the data (since that would come along for "free" in the EXCEL speadsheet). Perhaps a selling feature that might eventually entice a game develper to add this type of functionality into their product would be the potential for the game developers, themseleves, to use this feature to debug their game software under development and to add in developing scenarios as well as its use as an aid to any game players who want to keep detailed records. I hope that this capability might happen someday. At the same time I do not expect that it will any time soon. Meanwhile, I guess that I can content myself with all the wonderful new features that we do get so I am not complaining.

This is a pretty interesting thread. I wonder what the effects of a denuded forest would have on wheeled vs track movement? For traversing dense forests tracked vehicles might be able to traverse downed trees better than pick their way between standing trees. In contrast, wheeled vehicles may not be able to travese the downed trees and tangled branches. However, (based on the previous photos) there does not appear to be an abundance of tangled branches in the heavily denuded forests. Perhaps the explosions pulverize the smaller branches into splinters and only leave the larger tree trunks intact (either standing but stripped of branches or felled). I wonder would it be historically accurate to use arty to blast holes in forests for tracked vehicles to pass (sort of like how Daisy Cutters in Vietnam were used to clear LZ's)? Sumarizing the previous posts perhaps the rules for a denuded forest might be as follows: 1. No tree bursts. 2. Somewhat better protection when hiding or slow movement(but not better concealment) 3. Increased fatigue and exposure for fast leg movement (unless heavily denuded) 4. Traversibility for tracked vehicles (with higher "bogging" for faster movemenmt 5. Reduction in LOS blockage. 6. Mod'ed visual presntation 7. Possible reduction in any road traversibility in denuded woods 8. Model various degrees of being denuded from heavily tangled branches to everything pulverised to splinters). Perhaps these effect can be created to some degree using existing terrain artifacts such as through cratering and/or creating rubble or road blocks in the denuded forest hexes and down grading forests (i.e. a tall pines becomes the normal trees, normal trees to light trees, etc). Last thought. Modeling forest denuding probably wouldn't effect game play that much for most scenarios but it could enhance the fun level by adding more richness of detail.

There is another potential difference between naval gunfire and normal off board arty. In some cases (e.g. the DD's that came in close to shore at Normandy) the ships had a direct LOS to their targets on the shore. In this case the naval gunfire would be more like direct fire. Don't know if this situation occured in the Med or not. For instance, did DD's fire 5" AP rounds at a tanks and hit it given they had a LOS?

And don't forget 10. Desert lice 9. sounds clips of James Mason playing Rommel (ve vill CRUSH Tobruck) 8. Monty 7. Patton 6. Patton's ivory handled revolver (with the option of shooting at german aircraft 5. sounds clips of Patton by George C Scott in the Movie Patton 4. Humphry Bogart (option either as Rick from Cassablanca or as the tank commader from ..what was that movie?) 3. Winston Churchill wearing a pith helmet 2. civilains wearing those shriner looking hats 1. the mummy (for fictional scenarios where the Germans take Egypt but not being able to find the lost arc of the covennant they instead still buried treasure from a lost tomb only to...ah, I don't want to make this a spoiler so I'll say no more!).

Ah! I need to then make my own website, upload the image, and then use its URL. From what I could make of the FAQ instructions I thought that might be the case but wasn't sure. Thanks.

How do I post an image on the CM forum? I have tried following the directions under the "what is UBB code" link but can't seem to make it work. How do I make a URL that links to a .bmp file on my C drive? Thanks in advance, Ron Wilson

1. Add some level 1 only play options. Example lock camera view to eye level of viewing unit (except playback). Allow higher view as a map view (perhaps remove actual units from display to better simulate a paper map). 2. Add more event driven Ear Candy. Like having .wav files that provide the voice traffic of calling in arty strikes as well as simulating other types of radio traffic such art arriving at check points or providng the WWII equivalent of spot reports, orders, or vocalizing whatever the Tac AI is thinking. Of course one could only hear his sides radios (unless you have some radio intercept capabiliy which I imagine wasn't available at the tactical levels covered in CM). To do this might require stitching some wav files together. Like wavfile 1, "4" wavfile 2, "Enemy tanks" wavfile 3, "moving" wavfile 4. "north" wavfile 5 " on highway" wavfile 6 "10". wavfile 7. "Over" It may sound a bit like the voice on an answering machine but it would still be neat ear candy. 3. Explicited model radios and radio nets and radio traffic (goes with 2 above). 4. Add user definable checkpoints with associated times. These could be displayed in 1 and used by 2 and 3 above as event triggers. [ May 12, 2003, 10:46 PM: Message edited by: Midnight Warrior ]

I'd like to see scenario conversions of the the old AH game, Tobruk. That was a great game but was time consuming to play in that it pushed the limits of boardgaming to the limits. Also, the battle of San Pietro. There is a CMBO scenario of this but an update with the new game features (like bigger hills) would be nice.

1. I would like to see a rally "command". In CMBB when all the units gets mixed up it is very tedious to try to keep them back with their units. This would work just like a group move order does currently in the game but rather than all the units moving in the same direction the command would generate routes such that they would converge on the the movement objective as rally point (or some player enterable radius from the rally point). Perhaps a good way to include this in the game GUI would be if you double click on an HQ you could right click and select between the normal group move option or the converge on rally point option. 2. A split rejoin command. Once you split a unit it can be a bit tedious trying to rejoin them back together again in that you hae to hunt around sometimes to find where a units other half is before you can plot the movement for the rejoin. The rejoin command would automatically plot a route from the commanded unit to its other half (or vice versa). Like 1 above you could specify what kind of movement the half squad would use to rejoin its other half. This could be implements similar to 1 above in that if you double click on a half unit you could right click and choose between a move both halves in the smae direction (a mini group move) or a converge on rally point option. 3. Provide the + and - command as a GUI button so that you can step through units using the mouse and without having to use the keyboard. 4. Step by Paltoon command. Instead of having to step, step step ad infinitum using the + key to find a unit, provide a command that steps to the next platoon HQ so that you can step by platoon (or maybe even company). If you do 3 then this could be selected by right clicking on the + and -GUI buttons 4. This could be extended to a step to the next FO, step to the MG, or whatever. 5. ditto on the other posts for a sort missions by data! 6. ditto on the other posts on an assign support weapons to HQ! 7. Provide a command link to the next higher unit. Thus a platoon HQ would have a line to its Co HQ (perhaps a different color than the link to its subordinate units). A Co HQ would have a line to the Bn HQ. 8. (This is a repeat from another post but I thought I would include it here too) Provide an "Other" nationality to provide a hook to add any minor nations of choice that isn't included in the game by loading in 3rd party mods (as they will inevitiably appear).

There might be a compormise solution here. You could provide an "other" nationality in the game where by loading in the suitable 3rd party mods one can make them to appear as any minor nation they want.

1.With the big mountains in Italy it would be good to have some improved ways of controlling the vertical dimension of the camera. For instance that it will automatically tilt up or down when looking at points at higher or lower elevations. Or perhaps use the mouse wheel to control camera elevation. 2. IIRC, Rommel mounted aircraft engines on the back of trucks to stir up dust to confuse the British. I don't know if that would translate down to the CM scale, but if it did then it could be simulated by providing a truck that creates extra large dust clouds (and even when its not moving).

I would think that playing solo games using Level I only rules would somewhat compensate for the increased knowldege. Level I only play reduces one's knowledge of one's own forces which in turn would reduce the knowldge that one would carry over when he changes command roles.

1) Enable use of the mouse wheel configurable to either change view, zoom in, or tilt camera) Or how about use the mouse wheel to act like the + and - keys so that one can step between one's units without having to use the keyboard. One notch forward on the mouse key would be like hitting the + key; one notch back would be like hitting the - key. (Alternatively it could be implemented so that one could program the mouse wheel to do one of several functions to suit their taste).

My thought is that they might best split their forces and have the code hackers (Steve?) work on the engine rewrite while the modelers build CMBO models for the CMBB engine. Then perhaps they could turn out a CMBB'ized version of CMBO in say nine months to a year followed by a whole new engine that possibly covers a new theater in say another year. The idea is NOT to try to retro fit the CMBB code back into CMBO but rather add the CMBO units and terrain features into CMBB. That should require less coding and more modelling. I think that the reworked "CMBO" would be very appealing to the CM community even if it had no new features other than including the units and terrain features covered in CMBO with the CMBB features (I know I would like it!!) It could leverage off of the huge amount of scenarios developed and everyone could have the fun of replaying those old scenarios with the CMBB features. And not having to wait another two years for the next version would be nice for both the gamers (the last wait was awfully long) and BTS (from a cash flow perspective). [ October 02, 2002, 08:58 PM: Message edited by: Midnight Warrior ]

If you are serious about kicking the internet porn habit and need help I would suggest you check out the alpha course. http://alphacourse.org/ I would also suggest that anyone who is trapped in a bad marriage might also want to check out the alpha course. It has had some pretty good successes at turning bad marriages around. [ September 27, 2002, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: Midnight Warrior ]

Goods recieved in Foat Wuth!

I installing now!!!!!!!!! here in Fort Worth Texas (otherwise known as "Foat Wuth").