ASL Veteran

I don't think the problem is that people think the PTO is more worthy than other theaters ... it is that BFC has stated that the PTO is unworthy. If BFC states that the PTO is unworthy of doing, then those who want to see a PTO CM have to make it 'worthy' enough to be included or done. That's why you see the 'same old arguments' trotted out. Incidentally, for those who love pure armor battles, I'm sure there are a lot of players who find pure armor battles boring. They are usually over in about ten minutes at most, so perhaps it is an attention span thing .

I had heard rumors that you were making an 'extension' map but I hadn't seen any news on it. The two maps together would be absolutely gigantic. As it is now my computer has a little trouble with the Red Barricades map alone ... when deploying the squads in the editor there was a several second delay before they would arrive where I wanted to place them. I think the factory buildings and the trenches consume a lot of memory. I had to make a compromise on the gulley though (I would have had to make it super deep to create the cliffs so it would have looked funny) and I had to substitute rocky for the debris so there were some limitations with what I could do. I hope I did your map some measure of justice though. Incidentally I have the Red Barricades version of "The Commissar's House" along with "One Down, Two to Go" and "Fire on the Volga" up at the Scenario Depot which use different pieces of the Red Barricades map and I have "Blood and Guts" up at The Proving Grounds for testing right now too. Ianc ... thanks for the link. I might just go for it - I mean for only 2.99 :eek: . Maybe when I'm done with all the desert ASL stuff I'll look at some Tobruk stuff. I'm sure someone will probably get to it before I do though

I've vainly looked up in the Scenario Depot for the "Red Barricades" map referred to here. I'd be curious to see it. Could someone be so kind as to tell an ol' ASL'er just whar it could be found? Thanks! </font>

When I first looked at the CM version of the Red Barricades map I was astounded as to how big the factories were as compared to similar buildings on standard SL mapboards. It is almost comical to look at 'The Factory' on board 1 and compare it to 'The Factory' as it appears in Red Barricades. It is pretty obvious that the ASL / SL maps probably do 'downsample' (for lack of a better word) real world terrain quite a bit. I find the ASL maps fun to play on though so I don't have any issues with the downsampling. I think that this downsampling is reduced though in some of the later maps. There are quite a few later maps that are nothing other than large grain fields with a few buildings scattered around. The roads though are pretty much locked in since all the maps have to join together - an obvious limitation of the paper map boards of SL. Regarding the flatness ... if someone is attempting to be true to the ASL scenario that you are porting there are play balance issues that may crop up if you just start adding hills here and there. However, thankfully with the addition of the gentle slope feature you can add some elevation changes that are small enough to be rationalized as "too small to show up on the SL board as it was originally made, but perfectly acceptable to add to a CM scenario to add a little flavor". While it doesn't make a huge difference to play, it does make the map visually less flat - and a little less artificial looking. Having said that though ... I think that some designers take the hilly and foresty approach a little too far. Sometimes it seems like more than half of the scenarios at the depot take place in the Bavarian Alps or in the center of the Black Forest. Anyone who has driven down Interstate 5 through the Central Valley in California knows that the land for any specific 2000 square meter area can indeed be 'that flat'. If there are any CM players in Kansas or Nebraska ... I'm sure they've seen some flat ground too. I think there were a few battles that took place on some farmland too! As far as CM goes ... it has some limitations as well. It can be very difficult to add elevation changes when you are putting buildings around on a map. If your building is anywhere close to an elevation change it simply won't show up in the 3D view even though you can still see it sitting there in the map editor. Because of this, city maps are generally going to be flat as a pancake. If you don't make the city map flat, a lot of buildings that you think are going to be there simply won't be there. Now, putting elevations into a city map can be done, but the city can end up a little more spread out than might be desireable. Anyway, the bottom line for me is that I want to play the ASL scenario. If I'm playing a scenario as an ASL scenario, then how historically accurate the terrain is doesn't really matter that much too me. Naturally I would want to make the terrain as realistic 'looking' as possible, but I'm not going to destroy the scenario balance to do so. Regarding the original question - I too had thought about Tobruk scenarios, but alas I do not have the game anymore and neither do any of my friends. There were some pretty good tank battles in that game though - and I'm sure they would be fun to play in CMAK. :cool:

Best thing I've seen so far are the six shells in the M-10's ready rack in Line of Defense! Great job Kwazydog!!! :eek: :cool:

I noticed that the structure of the US company is different. In fact, the company HQ is now ten men instead of six. Not only that, but there was a six man HQ squad too! The US platoon commander is also five men. Regarding AT guns ... the blast from the firing of the gun will kick up lots of dust when it fires so an AT gun should probably be pretty easy to pick up after a few shots no matter how much concealment is available.

What do they need to go public for? To raise more cash for a huge expansion? So that Steve can be referred to as 'CEO'? Yes, they can all get executive titles ... Madmatt VP of sounds. Kwazydog VP of art. Charles ... I guess he can be the President ... or should he be the COO? Would Moon be the CFO? :confused:

I vaguely recall from the cobwebs located within the dark recesses of my brain that there were exactly 3 StuG IIIBs that fought somewhere in the Tobruk area. These three StuGs, as I recall, were the only StuGs to enter this theater of operations. I'll try to poke around and confirm this if I can find the appropriate source material. There were also the so called "Diana" SP guns (well, really truck mounted guns) and I think, although I'm less certain of this one, that there were some of the little 47mm armed PanzerJaeger Is in North Africa too.

Actually I was planning on doing some of the scenarios from Carnage at Cassino ... of course don't let that stop you from doing it anyway . I can tell you for certain though that I will not be doing the Carnage at Cassino campaign though. I will probably be taking my time getting to it anyway (and I don't actually know if my friend owns the other Cassino one - he may only own Carnage at Cassino).

I looked over your site and I would be interested in sending some scenarios over for testing later. I have a few suggestions that I hope could be done. I noticed that the Join has all the information for opponent finding etc, but what if an author just wants to upload scenarios for testing without looking for opponents? Yeah, they could select deactivated, but I think it might be better if, when you join, it can be specified that you are joining either as an author or as a tester (some may want to be both too of course). I also noticed that you don't have to log in to access the scenarios to download. I'm thinking it might be better if only members can download the scenarios for testing. Not only that, but maybe you could set something up where the author will get an e-mail notification or have a note put on to the scenario download area as to who downloaded or how many times the scenario was downloaded etc. I'm just thinking along the lines of something so that the author knows that the scenario is being tested and by whom. Finally, there should be an easy method for an author to remove a scenario from your site, either because the testing has been completed or because the author wants to put up a new or updated version. That's my two cents.

Actually, when I play a scenario I prefer that an opponent has seen both sides. Not only seen both sides but has played it a couple of times already from both sides vs the AI so he has a feel for how it plays. I prefer things this way in order guarantee a challenging fight since my opponent is not likely to make a silly rookie mistake if he knows the situation inside and out. I want to defeat someone who brings his 'A' game, not win because he screwed up or didn't recognize an important location until after it was too late. A scenario can be just as challenging when both sides have perfect knowledge of the opposing forces and tactical situation as they can be playing a scenario blind.

Stuff is in your inbox

Thank you for the offer. The material should be in your inbox now.

I would love your assistance, but I'll need your e-mail address. I've decided to go ahead and deal with the spam for a day or two so I will open up my e-mail controls and accept all e-mail if you don't want to post your e-mail address on the board.

I’m looking for a few brave individuals to test three scenarios that I would like to put up on the web. All of those who are interested will receive a zip file with the three scenarios and a two page Microsoft Word document questionnaire. Although the questionnaire is two pages long, the parts you actually fill out only consists of a Y or N or a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 in a few places (the majority of the questionnaire describes how I interpret the meaning of a particular response so that we are on the same wavelength on the ratings). I would expect that the testing be done in a reasonable amount of time and that all your comments be confined to the questionnaires so I can keep track of them all. Saving lots of different e-mails with various unstructured remarks can be helpful, but not nearly as helpful as the structured remarks from the questionnaire. You may choose to test vs the AI or vs a PBEM opponent. However, my intention is to have fun and relatively balanced scenarios that gamers can play vs other gamers so if you do test vs the AI you will need to be able to project potential scenario balance if played vs another player. The three scenarios that I would currently like to have tested are all city fights set in 1945. “The Slaughterhouse” is a medium sized scenario that is 28 turns long and depicts the Soviet effort to reduce the tobacco factory and the slaughterhouse located in Graudenz, West Prussia on 22 February 1945. “Acts of Defiance” is a small sized scenario that is 24 turns long and depicts a portion of the battle for Breslau on 27 February 1945. “To the Last Man” is a medium sized scenario that is 32 turns long and covers a part of the battle for Budapest that took place on 13 January 1945. I’ve got nine CMBB scenarios up at the scenario depot right now and all my CMBB scenarios have the av prefix followed by the year and month for a particular scenario. If you are interested in assisting me in this enterprise, then please either e-mail me or post to this thread. Because of an incredible amount of Spam recently, I’ve been forced to block all internet domains other than most of the major ones and few specific addresses that I add – so if your e-mail doesn’t go through to me I can add your e-mail address later if you post to this thread. [edited because Budapest isn't in Germany ... do'h!] [ March 09, 2003, 11:31 PM: Message edited by: ASL Veteran ]

For some odd reason if you group select in the editor and then click on a unit other than the one that gets highlighted by default the others are no longer selected. It never used to do that in CMBO, but for some reason it does that in CMBB. I'm not sure if this is coming through very clearly, but what I mean is that once you group select either by double clicking a platoon commander or by dragging the mouse and grabbing a bunch of units one unit will be highlighted in yellow and the others will be highlighted in white. The yellow one will be the unit that is placed where you click the move command to go and all the others will deploy based on that point. If you go and click on any of the white highlighted units then you will lose all the other units that were grabbed and it will only move the one unit. There is no way around this that I have found, other than to leave the default base unit as the base unit.

You have to go to "Preview" on the map after selecting your forces and then you just select each squad, truck, tank, etc and use the 'P' or 'M' command to deploy them where you want to. You can ensure that the troops loaded in trucks have to begin in the trucks by 'Locking' the troops in the trucks. It is possible to 'lock' the troops as riders without 'locking' the truck itself.

The PAW ... or 8cm Panzerabwehrwerfer 600 (also known as the PAW 8H63) according to "Encyclopedia of Infantry Weapons of WW2" by Ian Hogg "As it happened, Rheinmettal-Borsig had been developing an idea of their own for some time, and this looked like the opportunity to try it out. Called the 'High and Low Pressure System', the idea was to confine the explosion of the charge in a strong chamber but allow the gas to leak at low pressure into a lightweight barrel to propel the projectile. The system gave the advatanges of ballistic regularity and efficiency which came from exploding the charge in a confined space to develop high pressure, but the gun barrel could be light in weight since it had to resist low pressure. In order not to complicate matters the barrel was smoothbored and the projectile fin stabilized; in fact, it was a somewhat modified 81mm mortar bomb. The cartridge cas was a normal 105mm field howitzer case with a heavy steel plate in the mouth, pierced with a number of venturi nozzles and with a central spigot holding the projectile. On firing, the propellant burned in the case at about seven tons per square inch, and the gas bled through the venturi holes to fill the space behind the projectile. When the pressure in the barrel reached 3 1/2 tons per square inch, the spigot broke and allowed the bomb to be projected from the barrel." from the same reference as above, "8.8cm Racketenwerfer 43 (Puppchen)" "In effect, it is the 8.8cm Panzershrek Rocket Launcher mounted on the carriage of the 2.8 cm schweres Panzerbuchse 41 taper bore gun, with the rear end of the launcher closed by a breech mechanism of simple sliding block pattern. This did away with the back blast which was always an objectionable feature of the open tube launchers and, by confining the rocket blast within a closed tube, improved velocity and hence the range. (snip) The exact number of RW43 which saw use is in some doubt; some reports speak of 'several', others refer to it as a prototype. Obviously it did not meet the needs of the army in one respect in that it still used a rocket and the demand was for a weapon using less propellant than a rocket solution. But it seems likely that upwards of a hundred were actually in the hands of troops when the war ended, and what few accounts there are seem to indicate that the design was successful" So, to sum up, the PAW is a gun and the Puppchen is a rocket launcher.

Where is Peng? I should think that all this discussion about emoticons would have brought him out of the woodwork :eek:

Lords of the Realm 1 and 2 are two of my all time favorite computer games (along with the Siege Pack!!!) I really liked the little phrases that the various troop types used to say before doing certain actions - and the music was pretty cool too. Some of the provinces in the center of the map always used to get so ravaged that you couldn't get them going until you shipped grain and cattle into them - but then one of the computer players would go into that territory and steal all the cattle and grain if you didn't protect it! I actually played Lords of the Realm for several years all told - I actually played it until my newest computer at the time made the game run waaay too fast. I finally had to take it off the hard drive at that point. That one was a home run with me Steve!! :cool:

Mr Picky would point out that you've never played ASL or SL.

I feel obligated to chime in on this thread just to avoid any potential confusion . Much as I love ASL, the armor rules in ASL were abstracted in the extreme. I'm not sure that ... where armor is concerned anyway .... ASL is a good baseline for anything. ASL does infantry fighting very well, but armor was always a bit of an afterthought in that game. I think Tobruk did a little bit better from an armor perspective, even though the turn based format just doesn't do it with armor. Combat Mission is the "King of Armor" as far as I'm concerned. They hit a home run with armor on their first try.

Most of the more 'prolific' scenario designers are probably going to be too busy making their own scenarios to do very many reviews of the work of others. Also, most designers will have a certain 'style' that they use or have different things that they target and they may not like a scenario design that doesn't meet their 'style' or 'target' criteria no matter how successfully you feel your goal was accomplished. In other words, don't always expect to get warm fuzzies from other designers. If the difference of opinion is a philosophical one as opposed to a technical one - well that person's feedback isn't going to do you much good (if they say anything at all).

The search suggestion was probably made because there have been numerous very long, heated, and sometimes informative discussions on this topic in the past. Some of the longest and most heated exchanges are contained within those threads ... and yes, pretty much everything was covered in the most excruciating detail (along with hit chances, actual diagrams of the optics on various tanks, and accuracies of various guns on test ranges).

I've done it, but it is in testing right now. I can send it to you if you like - untested of course.