ASL Veteran

I don't doubt that his level of economic understanding to be that of a child's. I'm sure their views modified as they gained and held power, but the entire organization of the state is that of a giant collective. You have massive public works programs to employ workers along with the armaments industry (all paid for by the state of course). The Hitler Youth and the mandatory nature of it with the children being thoroughly indoctrinated ... yes by the state. The children were encouraged to view the state as more important than their parents. There were 'breeding programs' to encourage population growth - of the correct type. He had to deal with the Junkers and industrialists to gain power, but you also shouldn't automatically assume that a Junker or an industrialist isn't a National Socialist just because he is a Junker or an industrialist. Even today many wealthy 'elites' are left of center in their orientation. Probably most actually. There are a lot of theories as to why that is the case, but I haven't looked into it enough to comment on it. German soldiers even called each other 'Kameraden' or Comrade. National Socialist artwork and posters are almost indistinguishable from Communist artwork and posters in both style and color. Both flags are red, one with hammer and sickle of course and the other with the swastika. The similarities are many and both his writings and the party platforms that I can find online explicitly support the connections between the two. I believe, although I'm not sure, that Goebbels was even a Communist before joining the National Socialists. There are differences of course, but not enough to put them on different parts of the ideological spectrum. If you are interested in reading about the wealthy 'elites' version of .. I think they call it Communitarianism (the third way) .... you should read some of HG Wells works. Perhaps start with HG Wells 'New World Order' and then move on to his 'Open Conspiracy'. It is very dense and complicated reading but he breaks it all down in meticulous detail. New World Order was a little more polished than Open Conspiracy so I'm pretty sure it was written later. I believe it was HG Wells that inspired George Orwell to write his famous book.

The Blitz has H2H results posted for this one as one German victory, one draw, and two Soviet victories. The German also has heavy artillery support and the Soviets have none. I am not sure the StuGs can be penetrated from the front by the T34 either at longer ranges. If the German conducts a fighting withdrawal then the German should be able to run out the clock and force a draw. If the German remains in their forward positions then it probably could go bad for them depending upon what the Soviet does because the Soviet force doesn't all arrive at once and can be frittered away by an incautious Soviet commander.

Holocaust Denial must be a very confusing thing for actual National Socialists because Jewish people and Marxism are inherently linked together in the mind of the man himself. It would take some serious mental gymnastics to separate the two. If someone on this forum doesn't want to read the writings of Adolf Hitler please skip the rest of this post. I only post his words in an effort to show the absurdity of a National Socialist who believes in the theories of Holocaust Denial. You can’t be a crusader against Marxism without being a crusader against people of the Jewish faith. According to Adolf they are both one and the same. Social Democrat means Marxist in Hitler’s writings. At first Hitler did make an effort to convince Jews that Marxism wasn’t the best philosophy to adhere to but he quickly became frustrated. Try as he might, Hitler simply could not debate or reason with Marxist Jews. Please note that he didn’t necessarily disagree with Marxist views entirely and he even says here that he can understand some Marxist views. Remember that Karl Marx was Jewish and he actually wrote an essay about ‘The Jewish Question’ which can probably be found online easily enough. Once again though poor Adolf simply couldn’t talk sense to these people. They can’t be bargained with and they can’t be reasoned with. In other words, the only thing you could do with Jewish people is to exterminate them because talking to them is a complete waste of time. However, that shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that Hitler necessarily disagrees with everything the Marxists say. No, quite the contrary, he actually agrees with them in many areas. I have bolded some particularly pertinent bits. Nope, Adolf has no problems with workers uniting in the calling of ‘Social Justice’. Adolf is definitely not of the individual liberty school and is a collectivist through and through as long as he’s the one in charge of the collective. One could probably consider the Marxist and the National Socialist as ideological cousins as they are both born from the same principles. No sir, the main sticking point the National Socialists have with the Marxist comes with the first word in the party name: National. For Adolf the phrase isn’t ‘Workers of the World Unite’, but rather ‘Workers of Germany Unite’ because when German workers unite that makes the Fatherland stronger. He agrees with Marxist doctrine but he can't let go of his love for the Fatherland. That makes Marxism and National Socialism incompatible. For Marxists the opposite is true because they want to eliminate the nation state as an entity. Please note that his complaint about Marxists is with their relationship with the state and not necessarily Marxisms relationship with the working man. In his mind that isn’t even the worst of it though. If you add the Jew into the mix then you get a rather toxic brew. Not only can they not be reasoned with as shown above, but they … well I’ll let Adolf say it himself. So according to Hitler, not only were Jews Marxist with all that goes along with it in terms of eliminating the nation state as we know it, but they even have national aspirations of their own! There are dirty Zionists amongst them! So there it is. According to Adolf Hitler the Marxist and the Jew are inseparable and the choice he is faced with is to destroy or be destroyed. It is a battle of annihilation and anyone who thinks that they can separate the Holocaust from the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 as independent unrelated events is simply delusional. You can’t have the one without the other. In the mind of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists the two events are two sides of the same conflict.

You are not a Libertarian.

I realize this is in jest, but you might want to reconsider some of your assumptions since Hitler was a vegetarian, Nazis were environmentalists, and much of the leadership of the SA were homosexual. Just sayin'. I think the best indicator of whether or not Hitler wanted to invade the Soviet Union comes from the book he wrote. I believe the title of that book is 'Mein Kampf' and a quick glance through that should quell any doubts. For one thing Hitler equated Marxism with Jews and it is common knowledge what Hitler thought about Jews. In fact he states that Marxism is a Jewish creation - which perhaps is understandable to a degree since Karl Marx was himself Jewish by the standards of the day. Further he describes Bismark's failed attempts to stop Marxism and goes on to state that the nation of Germany could only survive by destroying Marxism. How accurate his version of events is I can't say. He finally goes on to imply that Germany lost WW1 because the German people were stabbed in the back by .... yeah, you guessed it ... the Jews. Hitler grew up German in the Austro Hungarian Empire. According to Hitler, at the time there were political movements afoot to make the Austro Hungarian Empire more 'Slavic' as opposed to more Germanic since Austria dominated the Empire. He even states that he initially thought that the Archduke was shot by a German since the Archduke was a leading reformer in shifting Austria Hungary from more Germanic to more Slavic. He then claims to have been amused by the irony of a Slave shooting the Archduke since he was their biggest benefactor. The long and the short of it is that Hitler ... well he didn't like 'Slavs' too much either. He also felt that WW1 was the inevitable result of the conflict between German and Slav both within and outside of the Austro Hungarian Empire. He also draws the conclusion that when conflict is 'inevitable' it is better to just get on with it than to pussy foot around hoping for peace. According to Hitler, hoping for peace just strengthens your enemies. So to sum up, Hitler didn't like Jews very much and he associated Jews with Marxism. Hitler didn't like Slavs very much either because he seemed to feel that conflict between German and Slav was inevitable based on his experience in the Austro Hungarian Empire. He also believed that when a conflict was inevitable it is better to get the conflict started sooner rather than later since delay only strengthens your enemies. Any guesses as to what nation in Europe might embody all of those things? I have a few ideas .

Not necessarily. There is a strong reason for Russians to be supportive of a viewpoint that the Soviets were lined up and ready to attack. If the Soviet Army was planning to attack Nazi Germany before Nazi Germany attacked it, then that certainly pours cold water on any idea that Stalin was a collaborator or friendly with Hitler. After all that happened there probably were / are some very strong views about Nazis and Germans in general and if Stalin himself is seen as being a Nazi collaborator well that can cause some issues to become less 'black and white' so to speak. Once you subscribe to the theory that the Soviet Union was planning an attack on Nazi Germany well then that makes the collaborator label magically disappear because - well you see Stalin was planning to attack Hitler all along anyway. So you see, it is actually in the interests of both sides to claim that the Soviet Union was prepared to attack Nazi Germany.

As far as the large army 'forward deployed' goes, my personal opinion is that what the Soviets were doing in 1941 was consistent with what they did during the entire cold war. For one thing all the territories acquired by Stalin through the Non Aggression Pact were previously part of Russia in 1914. In Stalin's mind he was simply getting back what was once theirs. However, most of the people who lived in those territories probably weren't thrilled about the return of Soviet / Russian troops so you could probably classify those territories as occupied territories. From a Soviet perspective then, if you were thinking of the territories occupied through the Non Aggression Pact as a buffer zone in the same manner as Soviet troops were forward deployed in Eastern Europe during the cold war then forward deployment makes plenty of sense. For one thing the presence of the Soviet Army would help to keep the populations of the occupied territories from trying anything 'disruptive' and for another it establishes a buffer zone between potential enemies and your homeland territories.

My take on this topic is to take a look at what Stalin actually did. From what I can tell his MO was to basically grab land or attack a nation after it had already been defeated or the land was ceded to him by a prior agreement. I don't think he ever aggressively launched an attack on a nation with a military capable of defeating his own or of putting up a good fight. In other words, Stalin never seemed to look for a 'fair fight'. When he signed the Non Aggression Pact with Germany I sincerely doubt that he thought Germany would defeat France ... probably at all let alone in 1940. I'm pretty confident that his line of thinking was 'hey, I can grab all this land from the Non Aggression Pact and sit back while Germany, France, and Britain all beat each other senseless. Maybe .... there might have been some idea in his head that if the war in the west was going against Germany that he might invade from the East 'IF' he thought it would be the final blow in the manner that he took out the Japanese forces in Manchuria. I can't imagine Stalin launching an aggressive assault against an undefeated Germany who is in possession of the continent of Europe as was the situation in 1941. That just doesn't fit with the way Stalin seems to have operated. Especially when you consider that the German Army of 1941 seemed 'invincible' if you go by the press reports of the time and the Soviet Army didn't exactly impress in the invasion of Finland - which Stalin probably thought of as a breakaway Russian republic. Stalin seems more like a knife in the back kind of guy who prefers to stack the odds in his favor as much as possible before taking an action.

Just so you know, he has a whole series of books with 'Killing' in the title. I don't know exactly how many there are but I think there is at least Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Lincoln, and now Killing Patton. I haven't read any of them, but the Killing Kennedy book was turned into an A&E mini movie that aired a while back and I think that one of the others might get the movie treatment as well. The Killing Kennedy A&E movie was pretty good. It didn't really do a lot of speculating and mostly just gave the viewer a timeline of what Oswald was doing and when. So I guess I would say that the title is just a continuation of what he has been using as a title for other books. I don't think anyone would classify O'Reilly as a historian, but he does have an extensive journalism career having spent several years at both NBC and ABC news IIRC so you could probably expect any of his books to approach a subject from that sort of an angle. There is also a co author that he collaborates with on all his books although I don't know anything about him.

I think it has to be assumed that at least 'one' of his units must have spotted the StuG otherwise he wouldn't have known it was there at all. Unless, of course, he is playing in Scenario Author Test Mode or something similar. IIRC if the player selects the spotted vehicle then the icons of the friendly units who can see it are lightened relative to the icons for other units. As others have mentioned though, without a save game there isn't much anyone can do to see if there is an issue or not.

It may bear repeating, but the Italian squads ARE split. You see, the separate elements of the platoons that some are referring to as squads are actually half squads.

I use Steam for all my other computer games and I don't mind using it. Whether Combat Mission would either fare well or not fair well on Steam is speculation at this point. However, BFC does have some experience with mass marketing because CMSF (Shock Force) was distributed through retail outlets when it was released. So there is at least some marker by which BFC can use to speculate what sales might be if it were available on Steam. Perhaps the market could be bigger now or perhaps not. I have the impression that computer games in general are declining in favor of things for XBOX, Android, and various things like that. By the way, BFC has a couple of games available for those platforms so that could be another indicator of what sort of mass appeal the game might have. So I don't think that it would be a fair assumption to make that BFC has no idea as to how much appeal Combat Mission games would have on Steam. I'm sure they have a ballpark figure that is based on some factual data that they have. If you look at the game itself though, I think that it would also be fair to assume that most mass market gamers would be turned off by Combat Mission's graphics and the UI. Neither of those areas bothers me, but the comments that I hear from those not familiar with the genre typically goes along those lines. The thing is, that with the current staffing level it is doubtful that BFC could meet those expectations. BFC would need enough sales to cover the cost of bringing in more programmers or graphic artists in order to appeal to the mass market. I think the timing would have to be just right if BFC were to go on Steam. The game would have to be at a state that was mature enough that more resources could be directed towards UI and graphics areas and less on game play areas in order for it to be successful on Steam. By the way, there are many younger players but they generally tend to be active or recent military from what I can tell. I have shown the game to various co workers in the past and while they might be curious at first, invariably the difficulty, graphics, and UI turn them into curious but not curious enough to purchase. For some of us who have been playing the game for a long time the difficulty level seems like a head scratcher, but yeah, playing this game can be very hard to do for someone who isn't ex military. That's my two cents anyway.

You got the first sentence of that imagined response on page 1. You got the second sentence shortly after that. The only thing that hasn't been offered yet is a refund which I'm not sure I've ever been offered by any game company before. Besides, something tells me that it isn't a refund that you are after anyway because if it was you probablyl wouldn't be posting what you are posting. What you want is the bug to be fixed right now because you want a functional game and the fact that a fix hasn't been delivered to you yet is making you frustrated. Just for some perspective though, there are plenty of bugs in the various Total War series of games that will never be fixed. Most game companies that I can remember would typically offer one patch or maybe two if you were lucky and if something wasn't fixed in the patch you could just go pound sand. Maybe things are different now, I don't know, but I think the fact that the programmer who was actively working on the bug that you identified responded to you in this thread directly should be seen as being sufficiently responsive to your needs. Perhaps you might take a moment to appreciate that level of responsiveness. The main thing is that the fix isn't in your hands NOW, but that doesn't mean the issue is being ignored and while I can certainly understand your frustration I think it would be fair for you to also appreciate how rare it is for you 'Joe Customer' to be actively interacting with the actual programmer on fixing a bug that you identified. For those who dislike BFC's communications on the subject, you should be aware that warrenpeace has been interacting directly with the actual programmer almost since the bug was discovered. Sure, they aren't communicating on a daily basis, but warrenpeace shouldn't have been under any sort of impression that the bug was being ignored. He has known from the beginning that the issue was identified and he also knew that it was being worked on. The only thing he doesn't have is a fix yet. Not having the fix is certainly frustrating and a little venting is understandable but fixing bugs can be a nasty business as explained in this thread.

The reason the games are split between base games and modules is because the base game units form the 'base' for all the scenarios, campaigns, and quick battles for that particular series. That's why doing the entire Eastern Front with one base game and a series of modules won't work. Any particular module can only interact with other units contained within that module or with the base game. So if all the TO&Es and equipment for the base game units changed during the time frame that is supposed to be covered within that game series then you would need a new base game. So the way to think of modules and base games is how the different units that are included interact with each other. A module interacts only with itself and the base game so if you want to pit two adversaries against each other they need to either be included in the same module or in the base game. Therefore the units included in the base game need to be sufficient to cover the entire period of time that is proposed to be covered in the time frame of that series so those units can interact with all the modules. Something like Volksgrenadier units will now need to be added in a module for the Eastern Front, but when the Bulge game comes out they might be in the base game - not sure. But anyway, from the German perspective, no I don't think the TO&Es that are in the base game were altered again before the end of the war (although I can't be 100% certain). There are lots of different German TO&Es out there and Steve says that German TO&Es are a nightmare, but the basic TO&Es will always be included in the base game. I don't know enough about Soviet TO&Es to know one way or the other, but if there were substantial alterations to basic units that would require a new base game.

There is nothing in my list that precludes the time line for the first module extending to the end of the war. In fact I mentioned that it would. You could make plenty of Berlin and surroundings scenarios with just the base game units and special German TO&Es, especially if you included Volksturm in the first module. There actually weren't that many SS formations in Berlin in the last days -actually there weren't very many formations of any type in Berlin proper. The only SS unit that comes to mind is the remnants of the Charlemagne division. So the ironic thing is that Hitler himself was defended to the last man by French, and other foreign SS troops and Volksturm while the actual heavy hitting SS formations were all down in Hungary and Austria. There could also be Berlin scenarios included with the second module. Modules aren't necessarily geographic centered but rather more TO&E and equipment centered. The only complicating factor would be if there were any plans to include specific historical buildings such as the Brandenburg Gate or the Reichstag or something like that. Perhaps there could be a special Berlin building and equipment pack which scenario makers could use with the TO&Es from the regular modules. In that way the pack could be tied into the modules. Even in that instance though you probably wouldn't get any stock scenarios that used the special buildings because it doesn't appear that BFC has plans to include any scenarios with the packs. I would prefer that some scenarios were included, but then I suppose they want to differentiate between modules and packs and if you include scenarios in a pack then it looks an awful lot like a module. Modules include up to twenty scenarios and several campaigns though so if a pack only contained like ten or fewer scenarios that seems like it would be a nice compromise, but it doesn't appear that BFC is going to go in that direction.

Not really. The Finns were involved in a fairly major Soviet Offensive beginning in June before they switched sides in ... I think some time in September or October. The Hungarians probably did most of their fighting in 1944 and they fought to the bitter end once they saw what happened to Romania when they switched sides. The Romanians of course switched sides and fought in several battles vs Hungarian and German forces. They also spent a few days 'fighting' for the Germans although the details of whether they actually fought and then switched or just switched is unclear.

You could definitely put Soviet marines in with the Finns etc. We are all just tossing suggestions out there so if you don't like my suggestion then perhaps you can list your own suggestion.

The way I see it, the SS had formations in all three German army group locations: north, center, and south. Luftwaffe Field Divisions fought in the north and center. German mountain troops in the north and south. Finns in the north. Romanians in the south. Hungarians in the south and center. If you consider that each module can only interact with the base game and not each other from a 'stock' scenario and campaign standpoint I think you would want the something along the lines of the following: Module 1 extends the time frame to the end of the war and includes: Luftwaffe Field Divisions Mountain Troops Finns Special German regular army TO&Es such as Gross Deutschland who fought in the north and in Prussia and Panzer Brigades etc. Module 2 Waffen SS Hungarians Romanians Lend Lease It might be possible to have special battle specific packs focused on Berlin and Hungary, but as demonstrated by Market Garden that kind of thing is hard to do since it would be hard to avoid TO&E duplication. I think I probably listed more in each module than BFC would normally include, but as long as we are speculating ...

In order to have infantry attack bunkers you just need to get them to within grenade range and leave them sitting there without any commands. They will throw grenades at the bunker on their own and take care of it.

He could be looking at the demo for CMBN and I'm not sure that has been upgraded from the original.

Up to this point in time no 'official' scenarios or campaigns have been altered or modified from how they were when they were initially released.

That is true, but you have to understand that charging less money for a game also does not necessarily equal a higher income too. A very simple demonstration of this would be if a game company sells 10 games at the $100 price point the Gross Income would be $1000. If the company decides to lower the price point to $50 then 10 games gives the company $500 Gross Income. The company has obviously lost money by lowering the price point if no additional sales results from that. In order for the company to break even by lowering the price point to $50 the company would have to sell 20 units instead of 10. If the company only sells 15 units at the $50 price point then the company has only made $750 and now they are losing money. The same could be said going the other way too. If you raise the price from $100 to $150 then 10 sales will give the company a Gross Income of $1500, but if we assume that only 5 customers will make the purchase at that price then the company will only make $750 and once again lose money. However, if 7 customers make the purchase at $150 then the company has made a Gross Income of $1050 so the company has made more money by raising the price and losing a few customers than it would have by leaving the price point at $100 and retaining all 10 of their customers. If you are on this forum currently engaged in a debate about the price of the game then you obviously see value in it. You just aren't sure if the value equals the price that is being asked for it. Only you can decide whether that is the case or not because ultimately the decision to make the purchase is yours. The only certainty in this debate is that it is extremely unlikely that BFC is going to be changing the price any time soon and even if the price does change it still might not be enough of a change to make the decision any easier for you to make. So while this discussion about BFC's pricing strategy might be a fascinating exercise it isn't going to alter the equation any with regard to your decision to purchase or not because the BFC side of the equation is essentially 'fixed' while your side of the equation is the only 'variable'.

In fairness to the pricing policy the 'game' isn't CMBN, the CW module, the MG module and the 2.0 and 3.0 (when it is released) upgrades. The 'game' is the CMBN base game so you aren't paying $100 for the game. You only have to buy the base game and that's your game. The rest of the stuff is additional to the game. I think that Galactic Civilization 3 was charging $99 on Steam for us to have the opportunity to purchase a Beta version of the game. I was thinking about getting the next version of Galactic Civilization, but $100 for a beta version was too much for me and I've passed on it so far. That game doesn't even have additional modules so you can't even break up the price if you choose to do so. I'm not sure what CMBN by itself is currently going for - what is it maybe $40 or something? There is your game - CMBN. If you wait a few weeks it might even come to pass that the 2.0 upgrade will be rolled into the price of CMBN after the 3.0 upgrade comes out. I don't know that for certain, but I've seen hints that it might be on the table so you never know.

1. You have to touch anywhere that is the green color of the objective location. It has nothing to do with the lettering or name of the objective. 2. As soon as your units touch the green area of the objective location you will get a radio notification sound followed by white lettered writing at the top of the screen that the objective has been secured. Once those points have been secured they cannot be lost by subsequent events.

The problem with your point of view is that the degree of medical aid that the wounded man requires depends upon the wound, not upon what the person giving aid wants to treat. If a man has lost a limb there are certain specific things that the patient requires to have done and those things can't be done while the person providing that aid is prone. Therefore, if the person providing aid tries to provide that aid while prone the result will be that the patient will die. It's really that simple. I would suspect that if someone could treat a casualty while prone then the wound being treated is not serious enough to cause death. So in game terms you could consider those casualties to be yellow casualties.