ASL Veteran

Actually I think truck crews get to have pistols when they bail out - they were probably just overlooked.

You could probably use the "STUN / RECALL" counter for Withdraw. Maybe "PIN" could be used for "CRAWL"? You could use the "MOTION" counter for MOVE. You have to use the "Fanatic" counter for something too .

Muzzle Velocity is not the only thing that determines accuracy at range. That's also an interesting firearms theory: heavier round = lower MV = shorter range. You might consider thinking about that one a little bit more. I'm not saying that a SAW is the same identical thing as a FG 42, but I think it would be more appropriate to put it in that weapon class as opposed to the GPMG class. The SAW is almost in a class of its own though as there really aren't any WW2 weapons that are directly comparable. Anyway, it's all opinion and speculation. Nothing to get in a debate over.

I'm kinda thinking that a SAW would be closest to the German FG42 that the Fallshirmjaegers used.

I don't think so. The MP 44 is the Sturmgewehr not a SMG (like some may be thinking) and uses a short rifle round of 7.92 caliber so I don't think the M16 would have better long range firepower. Think of the MP 44 as an AK47.

I think "Run" should be a "CX" counter and "Pause" should be a "TI" counter.

Indeed, this is precisely what I am referring to - a player's ability to dramatically alter the balance of a scenario in his favor without his opponent's ability to influence this action. I consider it to be beyond gamey - this is completely rotten in my mind. I recommend making them stone - although stone bridges can be brought down by a determined player as well it does take a little longer to accomplish.

The fact is that the scenario is difficult for the British player to win in it's current form vs a skilled German opponent without any bridges blown. Blow even one bridge and the scenario's balance is altered dramatically in the German's favor. I've posted on this board in the past that I couldn't lose as the Germans - and that was without any bridges being blown. Just as I guaranteed victory with both bridges blown, I can guarantee victory with one bridge blown. Without the threat of a British assault against either one route or the other, the German can concentrate all his forces on the one remaining route available to the British. Not really, because the balance of the scenario is being altered in your favor in either case - it is just being altered more with both bridges than with one bridge. In other words, you are giving yourself a handicap. The difference is by how large a degree. It would be similar to beginning a non bridge scenario and choosing between giving yourself a +25 bonus or a +50 bonus without consulting your opponent to find out if he is agreeable to your handicap or not. The fact that you feel that giving yourself a +25 bonus is okay and giving yourself a +50 bonus is not okay is similar to robbing a 7 Eleven and saying "well if I just take cash from the register and leave the cash in the safe" that you are somehow morally justified in your action. Once you have decided on the robbery you have already committed yourself to the immoral course of action - in our case playing a scenario against an opponent while artificially stacking the odds in your favor. If you are going to commit to robbing the 7 eleven you might as well take the money from both the register and the safe as long as you are going to be there. You are just as guilty of robbery in either case. No, our specific issue isn't robbery, but I suppose you could say that you are robbing your opponent of the chance of victory by artificially stacking the odds in your favor. That issue (who can destroy a bridge and how is it done) is but a side issue to the main point - Should a player for either side be able to dramatically alter the balance of a scenario in his favor by actions taken within the game that your opponent has no ability to influence or counter? In a sense, this is like the gamey recon on steroids. At least you can counter gamey recon by playing differently tactically or by choosing a different force mix. Bridge destruction is going to happen regardless of what you do. If you are set on destroying a bridge there is very little your opponent can do to stop it. Finally, I would just like to highlight this part of your own sentence small groups of engineers which would imply that these groups are setting charges on the bridges - something not currently done in CMBO. So There!!

Bridge blowing is like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. Once you've blown one you might as well blow both cause you've made a choice in how you are going to play. There is no way to justify blowing one as being okay and blowing both as being not okay. As a matter of fact, I would say that if your concious tells you that blowing both is probably gamey, then you should probably not blow any at all.

Yes, I see you thinking of reality here. Nope, an operation currently can be destruction or advance so the British don't actually have to capture both sides of the bridge in order to win the operation (since I think it is a destruction operation). In fact, if you've played the operation before you will note that all the German reinforcements come in on the other side of the bridge (in the green set up zone) and very few units are allowed to remain in the black set up zone on the "British" side of the bridge - and none enter on that side. However, if you doubt the effect that the destruction of the bridge in the Arnhem operation would have, perhaps you can try it vs the AI while replacing one of the bridge tiles with a destroyed bridge tile in the editor. I would take you on myself, but I think it would be too boring to play. Yes, I know that the British are not capable of destroying the bridge in that operation, but you have to agree that bridge destruction has a dramatic effect on the play balance of a scenario - that's the whole point I'm making. Nobody has yet shown that it was common practice to destroy bridges with howitzer fire either. On top of that you also have the matter of who gives the authorization to blow a bridge? If it above battalion HQ then it is (to coin one of Steve's favorite terms) outside of the scope of the game. Especially since bridges were generally destroyed before the enemy troops even reached the immediate vicinity.

If the German is intent on blowing the bridges then it is physically impossible for the British to move fast enough to prevent the destruction of the bridges In my mind, there is no difference morally between blowing the bridges on turn 1 or on turn 40. If you are going to blow the bridge you are going to blow the bridge - timing makes no difference since the water obstacle is just as impassible in either case. As soon as I realized what was being done I did drop smoke in front of the offending gun with my onboard mortars - problem was that it only took three shots from his 150 IG to drop the bridge so smoke is not a sufficient deterrent. The smoke had barely started to come out of the shells before the bridge was smashed. Alas my good friend, the two fords are not in front of the town, but over by the RR tracks (I forgive your foggy memory ). If the fords were in front of the town I think it would make it easier for the British though. The ground in front of the town is actually too low for tanks to fire very deeply into the town - but that is actually beside the point since the German wouldn't have to even be in the town to defend it. Let's say the British player did try to cross the fords with infantry alone? First thing the German does is place a ton of armor on the back side of that mountain to cover the road from the ford by the (blown) RR bridge. Armor and IGs can also cover the open ground in front of the church from behind the mountain without fear of reprisal. The British artillery is plentiful, but he wouldn't know precisely where the German was and there is a lot of terrain to hide in. Ya know what? I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is - I guarantee victory as the German with both bridges blown. Anyone want to take me on as the British? E-mail me if you're interested. I never tire of torturing British players in this scenario. Adding bridge destruction into the mix will make it that much more sweet. (Full disclosure requirements: I've played this scenario PBEM at least 5 times as the German - one time vs Kwazydog himself.) I really think this is an issue that should be addressed in CMBB - bridges should be permanent structures not subject to demolition. What's the point of putting a bridge in a scenario if it is going to be blown up? Try playing Augen Zu as the German if the Americans blow up the bridges on turn 1. How about that Arnhem operation from the disk by Wild Bill? If the British could blast that bridge what effect would that have on the operation? The balance effects blowing bridges have on a scenario are so significant that CMBB shouldn't even allow for bridge destruction. BTW Dan, haven't seen a turn from Mortain in ... oh, I think its been six months! That's okay, just finish up with CMBB instead!!

Yes, the Captain and I had a small run in on this one. We smoothed it over I'm happy to say - but it was at the expense of completing that particular game. I've played All or Nothing numerous times as the German and you can make life miserable for the British without blowing the bridges. Blowing the bridges does unbalance the scenario. If you are going to blow one bridge, what's to stop you from blowing two bridges? There are two wooden bridges in All or Nothing. If blowing one bridge is going to be your strategy then why not blow them both and make it a clean sweep? Blowing them both makes it a physical impossibility for the British to enter the town, so you can ensure victory that way. In fact, why don't you just blow both bridges by using direct fire on turn 1? Use the 88 on the one in front of town and use the StuG on the one by the RR tracks. I'm sure this will make for a challenging and fun scenario as your opponent surrenders in disgust on turn 5. As far as blowing bridges goes - well, I have to say the Captain would know better than I, but I don't normally associate direct howitzer fire as a common method of bridge blowing. Generally speaking I think the method would be to set charges. Now if CM had the ability to blow bridges with set demolition charges and such charges were provided in the scenario then it would be apparent that the bridge was meant to be destroyed. Without that though - that tactic is questionable at best because of the unbalancing effect it has on a scenario and because of the unusual nature of blasting bridges with howitzer fire.

Perhaps he was in the Austro - Hungarian navy? If so they would have the whole Adriatic coast to play on

I'm thinking that in order to get maximum penetration value out of the grenade you would have to have the warhead hit flush on the target. This would seem to me to be much more difficult with something thrown than it would be for something fired or propelled to the target. A human being is going to have an exceptionally difficult time getting the head of a grenage to hit flush with any vertical surface on a tank as it would most likely be in an obvious downward arc when impacting (especially the farther away from the target you are). I'm thinking that sloped armor would be more vulnerable to this form of attack than the near vertical armor of the Tiger or Mark IV.

Marking minefields isn't as silly as it seems. In North Africa they would have 'dummy' minefields where you would just have a field marked as a minefield and not know that there aren't any real mines there. So if you saw a marked field, it might have mines or it might not have mines. You can also have minefields that aren't marked (except on your maps). The possibilities are endless. Are there really mines in the marked minefield or are there no mines in the marked minefield but unmarked mines nearby? :eek: Or are there actually mines in the marked minefield and no mines anywhere else? :eek: Maybe there aren't any real mines at all? Maybe they are all real - including some that aren't marked? You could even put no mines in the forward half of the field and put a dense number of mines toward the back of the field (after the enemy has decided the minefield is a dummy)

Dang those craters on the street look huge - almost like meteor craters! :eek: I sure hope we will be able to place shell holes in the editor. That would be huge. :cool:

Found this account in Panzertruppen Vol 1.

What do you do with the BIOS things after you've downloaded them? They don't seem to have an install button. Just a file.

Okay, when I go to update drivers I get the message that some better drivers are detected. It then starts the upgrade process and goes to C:\Windows\INF\3DBGFW9X.INF and up pops the message "Please insert the disk labeled 'Creative (NVidia 3D chip series) Win 9x Driver and click OK" I only have two disks that came with the Annihilator 2 - the installation disk and Game Launcher disk. If I try to skip past this I get the message "The file '3dbgfw9x.inf on Creative [NVidia 3D chip series) Win 9x Driver cannot be found" and my attempt to upgrade the drivers ends in failure.

Thanks for the response Schrullenhaft. Looks like I am using the Creative Labs GB0010 dated 02/23/2001 (by checking properties in my computer). I am using the creative wizard display director to set the AGP between 2x and 1x. That's actually where the problem lies - I can't even use AGP 2x because my games all freeze. However, there is another little thing that's been giving me trouble - and that is that I have some newer drivers that I have on my computer but I can't install them for some reason because I get a message saying that I need to get something from an NVidia disk (which I don't have so I get stuck). Perhaps I will try this in a few so I can put the message on here.

Okay, so I bought a Sound Blaster Annihilator 2 video card a while back (maybe a year ago?) and I was having lock up problems after I had it installed. Turns out my motherboard could only handle 2x AGP options rather than 4x so the 4x portion was greyed out (so I couldn't even use all of the super duper features of that new video card I got). However, running on 2x was not really possible either since after I switched from 2x to 1x the lock up problems disappeared. Ever since then I have been running on 1x just fine. I recently downloaded a Direct X 8 upgrade of some kind from microsoft and now I have been having lock up problems again. Turns out that despite my every effort my computer keeps automatically resetting the AGP options to 2x, so now every time I want to run a game I have to manually reset the AGP option to 1x - kind of a pain in the shorts! My question is this: Is there any way to make my computer run on AGP 2x without locking up or is there any way to make my computer quit automatically selecting AGP 2x every time I reboot? Pentium III 550, Windows 98, HP Pavilion 8495.

Okay, I went ahead and calculated the Panther availability for each month on the East Front. For the faint of heart I am going to spare you the math and give you the end results. Before I show the results I will say that there are several assumptions embedded within the figures which may or may not be the case. Anyway, without further delay, here are the figures for operational Panthers by month as calculated by yours truly: Jul 1 1943: 200 Aug 1 1943: 161 Sep 1 1943: 182 Oct 1 1943: 195 Nov 1 1943: 163 Dec 1 1943: 233 Jan 1 1944: 220 Feb 1 1944: 179 Mar 1 1944: 219 Apr 1 1944: 363 May 1 1944: 175 Jun 1 1944: 291 Okay, as a check we know what the figures were for May 31st: According to Panzertruppen Vol 2 there were 238 operational Panthers (yes, I know this was posted already, but I'm posting it again for ease of reference). Ultimately I came in a little high, and the problem may lie with the assumptions embedded within the months of February through May. I also ran a min max figure for every month but I will spare you the results and just post the figures that seem to be the closest to reality. If anyone has any questions about how I came up with these numbers I will be happy to address them.

perhaps you can't follow my posts because you don't understand finance or accounting. That's okay, it isn't for everyone. Knowing that though, I'll try very hard to resist the temptation to rip your posts apart.

OMG, I am going to commit the cardinal sin of posting three times in a row!! I only add this because I wanted to make a quick adjustment to my numbers. Unfortunately my Minimum estimate is off because no additional Panzer units were deployed to the East Front in July so only the initial 200 can be counted and I can't add the individual replacements. This means that my raw minimum number will be off by 126 in each subsequent month because that's how many I added in July that didn't belong to units. So, the adjusted minimum for August would be 116 Available with 88 runners. For September it would be 144 available with 109 runners. For October it would be 160 available with 122 runners.

My other post accounts for both conditions Yes, I believe they can be used as a starting point because we have all the data to use it as such. Not really - I think I have narrowed most of it down, other than the 247 from the beginning. I attempted to get through the scattered information in your posts, but I never saw the May 31st figures posted there - just a lot of different unit strengths. However, even if you posted them already, I needed that information to make my post otherwise it wouldn't have made sense. Your posts also don't tie in the replacements with the inventory and the ready for issue figures and give a running total. If you did then I guess I missed it. By the way, I am not going to get into an argument about this, I am simply running some numbers from the same book you have and I am attempting to tie the numbers together into a sensible presentation. It is truly irrelevant to post the replacement units inventories without tying it into the whole or giving a running account. If you feel that I am just repeating in an inferior way what you have already spoken of, then I guess I'll just let you do your own thing. Incidentally, since I am not even addressing you or your posts I don't think it even matters if I read your posts. Perhaps if I was making a direct response to something you posted - then maybe you would want to ask if I read something you posted. Otherwise SOD OFF (to borrow a Cesspoolian term)