ASL Veteran

There are a few gaming clubs that you can join. Few Good Men seems to be the most active, but there is also The Blitz as well as Band of Brothers.

There is no scenario baking now. You have to eat all your scenarios raw these days.

Overall the German tanks have better crews and in general they will spot and hit better than the Soviet force, although there are fewer of them. If the German player gets the short end of the stick in an early engagement then there could be snowball effect as your numerical disadvantage becomes more severe. The German force also has more variety in that you can use the flak vehicles to fire at unbuttoned Soviet tank crews and your infantry can move rapidly independently of your tanks. You also have a pair of Stummels. As far as the beta testing goes, the results were pretty varied with the main factor being how the German player uses his force. A German player who tended to sit back near the set up area tended to lose and the German player who advanced aggressively tended to do well. The German player really needs to do a good terrain analysis before the scenario begins and he needs to carry out his plan aggressively. The German also needs to use his entire force and not leave stuff sitting around not contributing to the fight. I should also add that getting a perfectly balanced scenario is next to impossible and a designer can only know if he came close after checking the results of numerous play throughs. One guy saying he is losing badly doesn't mean that a scenario is unbalanced. The simple fact is that even the most 'perfectly' balanced scenario will have someone come out on the short end of the stick very badly from time to time. There are simply too many variables to control for. We do the best we can with the tools available.

I don't think that touch objectives are as common as occupy objectives so I'm not surprised you never noticed it before. But yeah, they have always disappeared when touched.

It depends on the objective. If you secure a touch objective you will get a short 'radio' sound and some white text will appear in the upper center of the screen indicating that objective X was secured. Touch objectives are secured immediately. With 'Occupy' objectives, the objective isn't considered 'secure' until the scenario ends. This is because you are given the points for occupying the objective with no enemy troops in the area. The determination of whether this has been accomplished can only be done at the conclusion of the scenario.

I can't tell you to like the game, but if the bocage is getting frustrating then perhaps you might try the demo for Fortress Italy. There is no bocage in Italy so you wouldn't need to worry about that.

Once an AI trigger has been activated then that's it. There is no way to deactivate a trigger once it has been activated and then have it re trigger.

Lines like that usually represent 'firebreaks' that are something like 25 to 35 yards wide. They are typically straight lines though so the circular thing is a little odd. You could also probably take their presence with a grain of salt if the location is fairly remote.

The problem, as I see it, is two fold. 1. Players just want to see the bridge explode because it would be 'cool'. 2. Players aren't accounting for the fact that the uncertainty of battle is not present when they are playing a scenario. The way bridges were captured 'in reality' is because of either surprise or confusion on the part of the defenders. Neither of those conditions apply to a scenario that is played in this game. It is not possible for the player assigned the task of defending the bridge to be 'surprised' by the sudden arrival of the attacking force. That impossibility is baked into the scenario itself due to the fact that the scenario has been created in the first place. There is also no possibility of confusion amongst the bridge defenders to result in the orders to blow the bridge not getting transmitted clearly to the troops who need to actually detonate the explosives. The fact that the player performs the roles of all troops on the map simultaneously precludes that sort of command confusion from ever occuring. The player will always be able to activate the command to detonate the explosives because the player will always be able to order his truppen to do so. There is no possibility that the runner will get lost or that the command will not be understood. Finally, there is no strategic or operational reason for the defender to leave the bridge standing. The entire universe for the scenario exists within the confines of the scenario itself. While it is possible to enforce some recognition of the overall operational situation through the use of total scenario time, there is nothing beyond the confines of the actual scenario map that precludes the defender from blowing the bridge at the first opportunity. This leaves you with some very limited scenario possibilities that might be interesting as a one time deal, but the utility of expending the resources to make that happen would seem to be better directed elsewhere.

That won't work either because of the way scenario victory conditions need to be structured. You have various victory levels for each side and you have a draw. If the attacker has any victory locations that they need to capture on the other side of the water obstacle then you can be 100% certain that the attacker will never capture them and gain those points because the defender is certain to blow the bridge before the attacker captures it. If the attacker doesn't have any objectives to capture on the other side of the bridge then there isn't very much incentive for the attacker to capture the bridge in the first place. It may be possible to have defender only terrain objectives on the other side of the bridge that the attacker may want to deny to the defender, but if any attacker terrain objectives are set on the other side of the bridge then those points are automatically lost to the attacker. If the attacker can gain some victory level without crossing the bridge then he doesn't need to cross the bridge to win and the bridge is now irrelevant. If the attacker can't gain a victory without crossing the bridge then the attacker is guaranteed to lose because the bridge will always be blown. If the attacker can gain a draw without crossing the bridge then that will always be your end result. Whatever victory level the game allows for without the attacker crossing the bridge will always be your end result. Timed victory points tied to a bridge might alter the calculation slightly, but ultimately what I said above still holds true. Whatever victory level is achievable without the attacker crossing the bridge will always be your end result. Like I said, there is no scenario there because there is no uncertainty about the bridge being blown.

You aren't accounting for something. If the defender can blow the bridge at any moment then you can be 100% certain that the attacker will never capture the bridge. There is no scenario there. Think about it .....

It's just as realistic to not have the tank commander mounting another vehicle within the time frame of a scenario as it is to have him mounting another vehicle so there is no 'realism' issue here that supports your position. It's simply something that you want to do within the game that may or may not be a reflection of reality depending upon the exact circumstances of when and where the re crewing takes place. Responding to your edit - perhaps, but now it isn't so simple an issue anymore is it? Now we have to introduce all sorts of caveats and restrictions rather than just a simple 'hop on' command.

Ah, here we go. I decided to type up and save a whole bunch of personal accounts and keep them handy because this stuff always seems to come up and I was getting tired of retyping everything all the time. In the 'Unhorsed Commander' category I have these personal accounts For this first one, the commander wants to switch to a different tank, but the battle situation makes it impossible for him to do so Once again, with this one the tank commander bails out, wants to mount a different vehicle but the battle situation makes it impossible. An example of an American tank commander who swaps rides. The problem with this one is the time factor. It is clear that the original battle has moved on from their position because they had time to bail out, run to cover, and treat a wounded crewman. Only after all that occurs does the commander have the ability to flag another vehicle down to take him back into the fight. In this example the commander is not close enough to the rest of the vehicles under his command to remount another vehicle. In fact, by the time he flags down a ride and gets close enough to mount another vehicle the battle is over. In this example, the tank commander tries to take over control of a neighboring vehicle in the middle of battle. While the commander is trying to sort everything out with the commander of the subordinate vehicle, the tank he wants to switch to takes a direct hit and everyone on the new tank is killed. In theory the tank commander should always be able to remount a new vehicle in order to maintain command and control. I'm sure that is how it is taught at every officers training academy for tankers. However, the reality and shock of battle tells us that it isn't always a simple thing to accomplish under combat conditions.

It's not as straightforward and clear cut as you seem to think it is. For one thing the personal accounts are not always clear about the time element with regards to the changing of the tank crew. There were also a lot of risks involved while jumping onto a tank that is actively engaged with the enemy. Another issue is that the commander may not just happen to be within easy walking distance of a tank he wants to take over and as long as his tank is destroyed there is no way for the subordinate vehicles to even know where the commander is let alone that he needs a ride. I have some personal accounts that are directly on point with this and I'll try to dig them up.

You will see the JagdTiger. You will just have to wait for the Bulge game before you see it. What Tankhunter says above is 99% accurate. The only correction would be that there were no JagdTigers used in the Ardennes Offensive. There were some that were supposed to be part of it, but they were delayed several weeks because of rail road damage and they were eventually rerouted to other parts. There are apparently three 'sightings' of JagdTigers in the Ardennes. One at Bures, one west of St Vith by a civilian, and one by George Forty in 1948. The speculation is that the one sighted at Bures was almost certainly a JagdPanzer IV 'Vomag' which has a similar appearance to the JagdTiger. The sighting by the civilian could never be confirmed because it was a drawing made from the person's memory. He basically said 'this is what I saw' and the artist said it looks like a JagdTiger. The guess on the one by George Forty is that he, perhaps, saw the vehicle in the Alsace instead of the Ardennes since if he saw it in 1948 then presumably the wreckage could have been verified and there would have been some corroborating photographic evidence (apparently all JagdTigers that were knocked out were photographed amazingly enough). There you go, all you ever wanted to know about the JagdTiger but were afraid to ask.

JagdTigers only fought in the west so you should never see them in the east.

It is doubtful that the 3.0 upgrade will include anything that isn't already included in Red Thunder.

The King Tiger isn't available until August. It was first used in southern Poland and arrived in theater some time around August 9 or thereabouts.

I don't believe that anything has changed with bunkers and crews.

Scenarios will generally come with text and graphic briefings that will help to orient you as to the situation. With a quick battle there is no briefing, but generally speaking an enemy force will not be coming from all sides. You may want to take a look at one of the smaller scenarios to get a feel for how things are set up and then try messing around with QBs to get a feel for the game itself.

Barbed Wire is oriented by placing another barbed wire section adjacent to it.

Actually there was a pre existing report that I made about a month or two ago about this. Charles marked it as 'New' and didn't revisit it after that. I can only assume that it was a complicated fix or something and he just didn't get around to it.

The darker setup zones are a much needed improvement. Some of you may not be aware, but the color of the setup zones change depending upon the time of day. At least that's how they work in CMBN and CMFI. In many cases, the setup zones can be nearly invisible when the scenario time is set to noon.

The British have air support in Colossal Crack in the Commonwealth Module The British have air support in the Market Garden campaign The enemy has air support in the German campaign in CMRT. I don't think there is any friendly air support in any of the campaigns or scenarios in CMRT but I'm not certain.

In fairness, there were serious ammunition issues with the MP44. There were plenty of stocks of standard rifle and MG ammunition since they had been producing it for thirty or forty years. The kurz round was new and there was never enough ammunition to go around. German soldiers were known to bury or hide their MP44s and grab a different weapon rather than run around with a weapon that only had a magazine or two. So having an MP44 with no reloads is probably more accurate from a historical perspective.