ASL Veteran

So in other words, Steve was accurate about his sales figures, but inaccurate about why CMBB sales were half as much as CMBO sales. Except that you are attempting to use sales of CMBO and CMBB to make your point that East Front games = West Front games in popularity. This sort of implies that Steve was misrepresenting his own sales figures doesn't it? I mean, if Steve says that CMBB sales were 50% those of CMBO then why would you try to use the sales figures of CMBO and CMBB to prove that East Front games = West Front games in terms of popularity if you believed Steve's claims to be accurate? It wouldn't make any sense now would it?

and what type of gamer do you think is going to be buying a game by John Tiller? You don't seriously think that gamers who buy John Tiller games are representative of the gaming public do you? I think it's safe to assume that people who like games by John Tiller fit into the 'hardcore' category which Steve has already said had an interest in East Front games. Quoting game sales statistics outside of what BFC has already told you is really pretty pointless don't you think? After all, who is going to know how much BFC has sold? So if BFC said that CMBB sales were 50% of CMBO sales then that means that sales were 50%. All attempts to ferret out information to the contrary is just ignoring the facts - unless of course you think Steve is a liar. I think it's pretty remarkable to blame a 50% drop in sales to a demo ... don't you? Isn't it at least plausible that there might be some other factor involved in the sales drop besides one demo scenario? After all, one would presume that those 50% who bought CMBO but did not buy CMBB were already familiar with the game and their opinion of the demo probably didn't sway their purchase decision one way or the other.

The funny thing about Redwolf's demo argument is that he himself probably invalidates it. I don't know for certain of course, but I'm going to take a guess and say that Redwolf probably bought and played CMBB. He may still play it. Yet, he disliked the demo so much that he compares the demo for CMBB with a toilet. If his demo theory held true, then one would presume that with a demo so bad that it's toilet worthy he wouldn't have bought CMBB. Yet there he is, probably happily playing CMBB for twelve years in spite of the bad demo.

Broadsword, I'm just curious, but why don't you ever make something that is actually covered by the time frames contained within the games themselves?

Except that you aren't comparing Market Garden to Normandy. When you state that Market Garden should have been cancelled in favor of rolling out the Eastern Front you are comparing Market Garden to the Eastern Front. So in general terms, you are comparing the popularity of Western Front themed games to Eastern Front themed games.

AFVs will deflect and intercept incoming bullets that are targeting nearby infantry, whether the vehicle is functioning or not. There used be some issues with this sort of stuff in CMx1 but that's old knowledge.

Excellent catch. Consider your findings to be confirmed and reported.

It looks like maybe you wrote your post in Microsoft Word before pasting it into the typing area for posting threads. You should always preview your post before submitting it when doing it like that because you will often get those wierd font brackets which make your post hard to read. It doesn't happen all the time, but when it does you have to go through and manually delete all the font crap out of your posts. Other than that, welcome to the forum.

I think you had an inherent advantage over most players because you are from Finland. You don't happen to keep a pile of toothpicks and pine cones nearby whenever you are playing Combat Mission do you?

The weapons carried are hard coded by the game so the answer is no.

Perhaps we are even reading the Obituaries now?

The design notes start off by saying "As of this writing" so it must have been changed at some point after the note was added.

I think we've gone way past the front page headlines and we are now reading the last column of the back page.

Or just tell him that the issue has been resolved. Since he doesn't have the game he'll be none the wiser one way or the other.

The biggest performance hits come from map size not truppen quantity. A 4km x 4km map is much bigger than anything that comes with any of the games.

Yes, that's true, but like I said - the ATR was a well known weapon system whose usefulness was known to be questionable at the time the skirts were added to the vehicles. Where is the 'trigger' that caused the Germans to suddenly decide in December of 1942 that it was a useful addition to their tanks? Are there extensive reports by the German army from 1938 or later indicating that something had to be done about the threat of ATRs? What caused the tests to be conducted in the first place? It's pretty safe to assume that the Bazooka would have been a revolutionary development in the balance between infantry and armor - a role the ATR was supposed to be filling. The fact that the Panzershrek and the Panzerfaust were developed shortly after the American Bazooka was encountered is evidence enough that the Bazooka was a revolutionary development in infantry anti tank weaponry. The ATR had been around since 1918 and by the time the skirts were being added the ATR was being phased out in most armies. The addition of skirts to German vehicles corresponds with this Bazooka 'trigger' event. As far as I can tell there is no corresponding 'trigger' event for the ATR other than it was known to have questionable usefulness.

Hitler's involvement could mean anything. After all, they were producing and testing the Stg 44 assault rifle without him even knowing about it.

I believe the campaigns are listed on the Gustav Line page, but off the top of my head for the bundle there is Italian campaign covering the Italian counterattack at Gela German campaign covering the German counterattack at Gela American campaign covering the American attack at Troina German campaign covering the Fallshirmjager battle at Primosole Bridge Polish campaign at Monte Cassino American campaign for the breakout from Anzio German campaign about the counterattack at Salerno There are probably some others but I can't think of them at the moment. The campaigns were made by various different designers.

The point is that the Germans wouldn't have been surprised by the sudden appearance of ATRs on the battlefield at any point in the war. ATRs were a known weapon and were used by all combatants including Germany and their allies, so the open question would be - why not start putting skirts on in 1939 instead of 1943? The issue of ATRs was a known one. The only weapon that suddenly made an appearance on the battlefield around the time it was decided to apply the skirts was the Bazooka after the Americans invaded North Africa in December of 1942 (note that with the article above that's the approximate time where it was decided to add the skirting). There was no Panther tank in December of 1942 and the Mark 4 was the most effective main battle tank for the German army at that time. The Tiger was only barely getting off the factory floors. 1. Skirts are applied to the German army's best main battle tank at the time the decision is made. 2. The decision to add the skirts is made around the time the Germans would be first encountering the American Bazooka 3. The ATR had been around since before the war even started so it was a known weapon by all combatants, yet no skirting is applied to any vehicle prior to 1943. The Germans had even been fighting in Russia for two years by the time the decision was made - if it's Russian ATRs in specific then why wasn't the decision to add skirts made in July of 1941? 4. Skirts are heavy and detract from the performance of the vehicle both mechanically and from a situation awareness perspective for the crew. If the intent of applying the skirts was to defend against ATRs, then wouldn't it have been cheaper and lighter to simply up armor the sides of the tanks in question? With these performance questions in mind, why are the skirts applied to tanks in the west? The Germans later switch to mesh skirting - seriously would you attempt to stop a bullet sized projectile with a mesh? 5. There were Soviet attempts to add skirting to their vehicles in 1945. They added what looks like screen doors to the sides of their T34s and it looks kind of pathetic. This Soviet attempt to add skirting to their vehicles is explicitly stated as being an attempt to defend against Panzerfausts. Certainly nobody could argue that the Germans were using ATRs in 1945. A clear correlation could be drawn between the sudden appearance of the Bazooka on the battlefield and the sudden German decision to apply skirting. It's practically on the same day. The decision to add skirting could not have been made for a trivial reason because of the performance hit to the vehicle and the extra materials used. The ATR was a weapon that was known since before the war started yet no skirts are added until the Bazooka makes it's appearance on the battlefield. The Soviets make a failed attempt to add skirting to their tanks in 1945 in an explicit attempt to defend against Panzerfausts. If skirts are for protection against ATRs then something just isn't adding up or making any sense.

There are plenty of issues with CMx2, there is no doubt about that. However, in the case of this AAR exactly how would the game mechanics be tilted towards favoring Bil over GaJ? The game doesn't know that Bil is playing it and so there is no "Bil is playing Axis so let's give the Axis a spotting advantage during this game." computation that's being done by the game. So if someone thinks there are spotting irregularities they are going to need to come up with something better than that or it's just going to look like .... well it's going to look like whining and blaming the game for your own mistakes. One thing that GaJ even acknowledged was that he was unaware of the importance of the HQ unit for his Tank Destroyers. Apparently he didn't retain it because he didn't value it's combat power. Unfortunately for GaJ the HQ unit had the radio so his TDs apparently can't share spotting information because he left the HQ back in the rear. So how well over all was GaJ paying attention to keeping units within C2 and how well were his units sharing spotting information with each other. Also, how many pairs of eyes did GaJ have on any specific location as opposed to how many pairs of eyes Bil had? More eyes equals better spotting and better command and control equals better information sharing. Could it possibly be the case that Bil is simply performing those simple tasks better than GaJ? I guess it depends on what someone feels is more likely - the German player has an inherent spotting advantage in Combat Mission or Bil is handling his troops in a superior manner to his opponent. In their first AAR Bil was playing as Allied and he seemed to be spotting better than GaJ in that game as well.

Why do you suppose the Germans waited until late 1943 to start giving their tanks skirts? ATRs were in common use since before the war started - the British used the Boys ATR and there were several Swiss designs that were being used by various nations. The Poles had a decent ATR design as well. Even the Germans used ATRs up until 1942 or 1943 or thereabouts. The Finns even had a 20mm ATR design. It seems like the Germans started adding skirts at about the same time ATRs were being phased out in most armies. Even the Soviet Union started doctrinally using their ATRs for purposes other than Anti Tank by 1943.

The Pillboxes sink into the ground after the game begins and they always have since CMBN first came out. The same thing happens with trenches to some extent, mostly if the terrain isn't flat. The Pillbox has to deform the terrain mesh in order to lower it's profile in the ground (to simulate the Pillbox being dug into the earth) and the mesh simply doesn't get deformed until the set up is completed. It's not a bug - it's designed to work that way to lower the Pill Box profile.

John, when are you going to buy Fortress Italy? BTW, I was at the CMBB demo in Southern California so you may have met me. I seriously doubt if there are any records of the attendees laying about in a dusty vault at BFC HQ. I don't recall there ever being any CMAK demos though.

The western allies in 1944 didn't have or use any ATRs, yet the Mark IV still has the skirts in the west too. The skirts add a lot of weight to the vehicle and from what I remember the added weight made the vehicles difficult to steer. One would think that if the skirts had no effect on HEAT rounds the Mark IV wouldn't keep their skirts on in the west. :eek:

The height of the weapon on the tripod may not align exactly with the window or opening you are attempting to fire out of.