ASL Veteran

When moving armor you should almost always use the DASH command - almost to the total exclusion of anything else. The tanks will be more effective if a group of tanks all arrive at the destination at a similar point in time so that they can all engage any threats that are spotted. If you use ADVANCE or even QUICK then the tanks will show up individually and just get picked off. DASH will also let your vehicles move down roads the way you want to. If possible you should put tanks into AI groups individually - so one tank = one AI group. If you don't have enough groups available to do that then you should make your AI groups as small as possible. Modern tanks can fire accurately at speed so there is almost never a reason to have them not moving at DASH. WW2 vehicles can't fire on the move like that, but at least you can get them all to their destinations as one group thus reducing the risk of getting them picked off one at a time. So DASH is your friend when using vehicles. About the only time I would use something other than DASH would be if you are crossing a large open field in range of enemy units. So long as all your vehicles are already in range of the enemy then you can use something like QUICK or ADVANCE, but otherwise DASH. Did I mention that you should be using DASH for vehicles? Yes, DASH is what you want to use in almost every circumstance.

The main thing you have to be aware of as the Soviet commander is that every single one of your BTR60s can swim. In fact, the only thing that can't swim are the tanks and the Shilka's.

I understand but all I can say is - it is what it is. Things will also not actually always deploy where your stuff initially deploys in sequence as you describe - in terms of adding troops later on. For example, if you have a 4km long map and you have already deployed Blue forces in a set up area somewhere in the center of the map and then you decide that you want to add a few independent teams those teams will sometimes deploy somewhere in the middle of your setup zone and you have to hunt for them amongst the stuff you have already deployed. Other times they will end up on the other side of the map. I've honestly never put enough thought into where they are showing up on the map in 3D mode to figure out what logic the game is using because I am always going to be putting them somewhere else anyway so I'm not really sure what difference it makes. You can always grab formations by Shift + Click then drag to form a box, thus highlighting everyone and then plopping them all down where / near where you want them. When they go where you place them they tend to spread out a little more than how they are where they initially show up. If the issue is that they are overlapping each other then just click on a unit that isn't overlapping, click on the company in the unit display for that squad / team whatever (I'm talking literally about the area of the UI in the lower left hand side for that unit - it's clickable if you didn't know) and that will take you to the company commander. You can then just double click the company commander and that will highlight all the units in his company - then you can plop the company wherever you want them and sort them out (or platoon, or battalion, or whatever).

It would ask for your Windows PIN if you were logging into your Microsoft account for some reason.

Are you saying that a real commander can give out different (even contradictory) orders every couple of seconds with the complete expectation that the orders will be received and understood by the recipient and immediately acted upon in the exact manner expected by the commander?

Just for clarification - the elevation that water will go to will be equal to the lowest elevation tile that touches a water tile (ie adjacent to one so you don't even need to set elevations in the water tiles themselves), not the lowest elevation on the map in general. This allows you to massage your map to some extent because you can alter your elevations without consequence so long as they aren't touching the water tile and you can manipulate how your shoreline looks by keeping the tiles next to the water within a few meters above the water (so put a tile 3 meters above the water level next to the water and then put something 20 meters above the water level next to that tile so it's not directly next to the water. You can also put dykes and levees like in Holland and even have the water level higher than the surrounding terrain so long as your levee tiles are consistent.

Actually it's the opposite. Farmers prefer that there is no savings time. Agricultural states like .... I think Indiana .... don't have daylight savings time because they have to milk the cows at the same time everyday or something like that. Anyway, not every State in the US observes daylight savings time. I seem to recall that the reason for daylight savings time was to allow more daylight for people to go shopping or something like that. Just going off the top of my head though so I might not be remembering correctly.

Everyone fighting in WW2 also had their own brain. I don't think Ike positioned every infantryman on the battlefield himself.

Well as SimpleSimon points out it's going to be situational. An attacker typically doesn't need a large setup zone while a defender needs a large one. At the same time though you do need to limit the defender from deploying in certain parts of the map at times so you can't just give him the entire map to set up on. A lot of times I end up with LOS to a setup area (not intentionally btw) because when I am looking at the terrain in Google Earth it's not always obvious how things will play out once you go to the 3D. Then it's like 'whoa, those guys can see all the way over there?' By then it's basically too late because your map is completed and you have been deploying troops so your kind of stuck. Sometimes stuff happens. But as far as I'm concerned there is almost never a good reason to have no setup zone at all if you have any intention of having the player play that side of a scenario.

Or still another might be that we only have 3 setup zones to work with and there are times when you need four setup zones. At any rate, yes, the designer should always give the player a set up zone that is suitable for the situation whenever possible.

I'm sorry, but you are just simply mistaken or being willfully obstinate here. So Guderian says that the Sturmtigers were prototype vehicles crewed by factory workers and the 9th army report says that two Sturmtigers from Sturmtiger Kompanie 1000 (not 500, not 1001, but 1000) arrived in their area of operations as indicated by the army status report. Two Sturmtigers at least one of which was the one with 'light steel' armor. The other one may or may not have had the light steel armor we just don't know because it is unsaid by Guderian so we can't say one way or the other. TWO STURMTIGERS not THREE. TWO STURMTIGERS from 1000 Sturmtiger Kompanie as indicated on the official army status report. TWO. Okay, now that we have that out of the way, apparently some Sturmtigers were sent from Warsaw to Hungary. Since only TWO were sent to Warsaw then those sent to Hungary must have been the same two that were at Warsaw. Not THREE, and not FOUR, but TWO. Those two were then sent back to Warsaw and then subsequently sent back to Sennelager in Germany for refitting. That should be pretty definitive unless someone wants to say that Guderian was a liar or that the official 9th army status report was wrong. If someone wants to die on that hill then I don't know what to say about that. Keep on believing what you want to believe in I guess.

Okay, well I’m not seeing any evidence of any Sturmtigers with the Feldherrnhalle. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, but absence of its presence is not evidence of its presence either. Jentz lists the following vehicles for the FHH There are some problems with the text on the tank encyclopedia Okay so the text here says that the second Zug was sent to France and then subsequently withdrawn back to Warsaw which would leave the first Zug in Hungary to be attached to the FHH – well that doesn’t make any sense at all because if the second Zug was sent to France, then it wouldn’t be withdrawn to Warsaw leaving the first in Hungary. Obviously if the second was sent to France, then the one that was withdrawn to Warsaw was the first Zug not the second Zug which leaves none in Hungary because there was only one Zug of two Sturmtigers sent to Warsaw (one of which was the mild steel prototype). In order for there to be any remaining in Hungary the second Zug can’t go to France and there is only evidence of two being sent to Warsaw – one of which was the mild steel version.

I wasn't feeling insulted even though his remarks could be taken that way. I just chalk it up to English not being Dan's primary language so he probably doesn't get all the subtleties. AKD's Google Fu leaves me in awe by the way . As far as Dan's position on the Sturmtiger goes - well even though he believes without a shadow of a doubt that Sturmtigers fought on the Eastern Front (or should I say Sturmtiger in the singular) he just hasn't provided enough evidence yet to prove his point to an objective neutral observer. Even if you take everything Dan provided at face value we are only talking about Sturmtiger in the singular with no evidence that it was used for anything other than taking up space on a train while waiting for the Soviets to look it over and take photos of it. What was it's operational status? Was there a maintenance company assigned to keep this singular Sturmtiger running? Did it fire at anything? Regardless, Fire and Rubble has been released so this discussion is academic at this point.

Incidentally we already know about the two that were assigned to 9th Army but those were prototypes that used light steel superstructures so you are going to have to find some different Sturmtigers. Here is from Guderian "To the Army Group, for the purpose of its being put to use in Warsaw - on August 14, dispatched: one Tiger, with a 38cm rocket firing ramp (test model), which is not suitable for use against anti-tank forces, as it is made of light steel." General von Vormann said the following about those Sturmtigers "They have only factory personnel who can't shoot" So those two Sturmtigers that you are referring to above were prototypes made of light steel not actual production model vehicles with actual armor on them.

You are the one trying to get it into the game not me. That's better info than the photo by itself. Did they engage in any action or did they just move around on trains?

Photographs are almost useless as proof of anything unless the context is iron clad (many photos are incorrectly labeled). If they are looking over the vehicle in June 1945 then it's irrelevant where they are located because there is no way to know how it got there or when. You would have to come up with 'Unit such and such was equipped with X Sturmtiger's and they were located / used in town Y. The one used in Warsaw actually was crewed by non soldiers.

Capt - you just gotta look ten forums up from the Cold War forum and there is a whole thread about it. Maybe you could toss a few things in there.

It should go away when you start your next turn. I seem to recall that it used to do that whenever you upgraded your game and continued an ongoing PBEM (happened to me a couple times when CMBN first came out). Although I don't recall it persisting after exiting the turn so not entirely certain that it's the same thing as before.

Well you can't really compare patching on Steam to what BFC is currently doing because the vehicle for getting the patch to the gamer is different. Comparing apples to oranges. Maybe when all of BFC's games are on Steam then perhaps patches will come out more frequently (if necessary of course)

I'm sorry but that's just a bridge too far!!

The crazy part about Tarawa is that the island would entirely fit on a CM sized map. You just couldn't put that many troops on it and still have a playable game so it would obviously have to be broken up.

You mean 'Grazing Fire'?

Try over at The Few Good Men THE FEW GOOD MEN – WHERE WARGAMING AND HISTORY COLLIDES or The Blitz Index - TheBlitz and you should find someone reasonably quickly

Incidentally there was also an MP34o (for Austria) but that was the Solothurn S1-100 and it was used by the German Police as well as being sold worldwide in large numbers. It was the standard SMG for the Austrian army and police but the Germans left it chambered for the 9mm Mauser instead of the 9mm parabellum.