Pham911

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by russellmz: thanks, good, er, reply. however, the race goes not to the strong nor the fleet of foot but those who endure. so the democratic endurance of the bald eagle survives despite once being near death while the dictatorial ferocity of the tiger, is in much danger. So eventually with eleven eagles surviving the one tiger is doomed to extinction. but bruno something said the quote was from a german officer in wwii. i was wondering who said it.some guesses included von luck and rommel but i don't know if those are right... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ahhhh. See, I should pay more attention before I post. Not sure who said it, but it still sounds like a made up figure to this reporter. I'm going to guess Guderian. If I'm right, what do I win?

Offical answer: Since a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, and German tanks were often named for predators which eat things like birds or people, a Panther or Tiger is indeed worth more than a Sherman, as Shermans are made in the US, who's national symbol is an Eagle, which makes it easy prey to the German tanks. Also, all Allied tanks were driven by people, which makes them doubly vunerable to German armor. I imagine it would take more than 11 Allied birds to take down a German non-native carnivorous cat. On the other hand, maybe the original poster of the quote in question was wrong when they said the 10:1 ratio, as it just sounds made up. Hope this helps.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Pacman: I am glad to see kwazydog and Madmatt out in the field. They have made so many great contributions and I hope they can make a great game even better. Thanks!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> By "out in the field", do you mean sitting on thier asses in front of a computer screen? On second thought, I guess it sounds better your way.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cuchulainn: Just to let you chaps know that there is a very interesting interview with the Producer of Battlefield: 1942 at http://www.dogfighter.com/interviews/show.php3?interview=969897255 <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> "Some of the larger scenarios will have up to 64 players at one time like the Battle of Kursk which in the real counterpart included over 3000 tanks, this is quite impossible with today's technology. By scaling down the size of the battlefield we can achieve the same awesome feeling of a clash in titanic proportions! " I think it's very cool that they can simulate 3000 tanks in combat with a mere 64 in the game. I mean, 64 and 3000 are practically the same number. According to BF1942, there were almost 1000 people killed in action during WWII. Also, I thought that Kursk was too damn big in the first place and needed some scaling down. I wonder where the residents will go... At any rate, first person games *never* get played with realisitc tactics(unless you play with only like minded people). First, there's no risk, so a human wave assault is as good as a stealthy approach. Ow, I died. Oh, I spawned. Ow, I died again... Second, most people in the general gaming market(and I've played enough Quake, Tribes, and Unreal Tournament to know) are numbskulls who couldn't function in a group if you shackled them together. Third, Small unit tactics(like those employed by the 3000 tanks in Kursk, I guess...) don't work when everyone wants to be top dog. I'll have to wait until it's released before I hate it, I guess, but I hope that in the tradition of Kursk, the producers of Battlefield 1942 will change the scope of Stalingrad from an epic struggle to a squabble over the guard shack outside the tractor works.

Email doesn't work too well without the Internet, so I'd say it's already in. (Mace is right. There was a vote of sorts during the beta on wether we wanted the game sooner, or wanted to wait a month or so for TCP/IP and Lan play. We wanted the game, and the missing component has been promised in a patch. And CM2 is coming someday.)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Steve Clark: I think the thing is missing from this discussion is SCALE. All of you talk expertly about the strategic campaigns of the Eastern Front. In CM2, however, only a small fraction of any the land area will be contested and in that small area, you can only fight with a relative handful of tanks and infantries. Thus, you are not going to get the sweeping flankings around one city to the next or a charge against a 50-mile long defended trench to find a weak spot. You are just going to get the weak spot. I could be wrong but we need to consider the size and scale of the maps to see if CM2 will offer anything substantially new in the way of tactics than CM1.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thank you. The scale is, indeed, the issue. Mobility or stagnation of warfare on different fronts really doesn't matter at the level that CM(and CM2 I assume) deals with.

I'm getting a similar, out of the blue(never happened before) experience when trying to play the new scenario Seven Roads to Hell. I pick allies, hit go at the setup screen, and the "Computer Thinking" box appears and just sits there. No bar appears in it, and the game looks hung. After reading Matt's comments I tested it again and found that CM isn't actually locked up (no "not responding" message in task manager). Is this the same problem? I've left it on for a while like that and it never seems to do anything at all. Happens every time I try the scenario, and I've never had this occur before.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by russellmz: maybe the tracer size can be an option...nice thick ones when u pretend its sci-fi colonial moarines vs alien nazis...er, not that i pretend that. Or thin ones to sim real life.(were they thin?) <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Not sure about alien nazi weaponry, but normal tracers are bullet sized, though they do leave a streak as they fly through the air.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by ScoutPL: I sure dont want to lecture here but I think you're a little misinformed on the nature of warfare on the eastern front. Rather then being a huge, fast-rolling mechanized fight with sweeping pincer attacks and deep penetrations, it was more like a steady attritional slugfest with occassional penetrations and encirclements. You have to remember, the war in the east lasted for almost four years, much longer then the 10 months or so of the western campaign. Four years of thrust and parry, thrust and parry? Hardly. After the German failure to seize Moscow in the first fall campaign they were pretty much fighting a defensive campaign. I dont care what Hitler's focus was, the guys on the front knew they were just fighting for time. A good example of this is the Battle for Kursk during the German offensive in July, 1943. Long heralded as the greatest tank battle of all time, it was only named so because of the huge number of armored vehicles that fought there. The Soviets knew of the German offensive beforehand and had planned and dug in accordingly. Massive earthworks, fortifications, and obstacles were thrown in front of the Germans, who also learned of the Soviet preperations beforehand but were ordered to attack by Hitler anyway. The Fourth Panzer Army was destroyed and the Ninth Army almost encircled. Not because of stunning blitzkrieg counterattacks from the soviets, although those came as soon as the Germans had wasted their opportunity, but because the germans simply beat themselves to death against the impenetrable defenses. As much as a lot of tanker enthusiasts like to preach the success of the "blitzkrieg" it is really not that effective against a prepared, determined defender. I think a close study of the fighting on the eastern front teaches that.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I was under the impression that Blitzkrieg used mobility to avoid defended positions, not to engage them needlessly. They focused on specific objectives and not on destroying the enemy army through attrition. And, the war lasted 4 years there, but the original German advance was pretty rapid.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Supertanker: I assume the terrain choices will lean in favor of gameplay. Read the BTS CM FAQ on, "The Allies had so much of everything, how can you balance scenarios?" (Since I know someone will ask, just click that little cartridge over on the left marked "FAQ" and scroll down.) It would be easy to make unbalanced scenarios in CM1, but they didn't. I would guess the same will apply to CM2. Scenarios will likely focus on battles for cities, villages, and other terrain where infantry played a vital role and had a good chance to take out armor. Personally, I've got a few dozen virtual sticky bombs that bear the hammer and sickle and are aching to be applied to some German armor. They didn't apply Zimmermit because they thought it looked cool! If there is a lot of open terrain, well, Red Devils is right - there should be a LOT of Soviets, too.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> In CM I can make a max size map with 5 battalions against 11 rifle companies. It breaks my computer and requires a cold boot to fix if I run it, but I can make it. If the CM2 engine is just a more capable version of CM1, it could handle large battles. However, it'd probably have to be called Combat Micromanagment instead.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mark IV: Here's hoping (and believing) that CM2 models reality at least as well as CMBO, and infantry plays the same part as it did on the Eastern Front in real life. If the unit modeling is correct it shouldn't matter which scenario you play... what happens in the game should be pretty close to what happened in real life, like it is in CMBO. It is weird to think that the people who put this wonderful combined arms maneuver game together, would suddenly abandon all principle to create an ahistorical blastfest. It was a big war and I think BTS will get it right. It'll probably be later than anybody's worst guess, and I'll pre-order now... if I get a poster!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Poster? Cool idea. I'd pay extra to get a CM2 poster(hopefully in a nice, dark Russian or German propoganda style, with most of the text in Russian or German). That would be sweet.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jake: Aha!! My dilemma is solved...I have managed to recreate the night by a cunning ploy of switching off all the lights in the room, then by dangling some torches from pieces of string attached to my ceiling I have been able to aesthetically recreate the effects of tracer rounds. Adding to this a variety of plant foliage attached to my desk for camo purposes and a little Wagner classical music playing....and hey presto!!..all the fun of the battle...with none of the bloodshed!!..well... ok...a little bloodshed..manuals can give nasty paper cuts.. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Wimp. I hooked up a live 88mm shell to my computer and banged out a little program that makes it explode in concert with any direct hits to my tanks. I live in fear.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Colonel_Deadmarsh: Abbott, I'd love to see our wonderful country? How about financing my trip so I can see exactly what you mean? Seriously though, I didn't say Russia didn't have different kinds of terrain. But some of the different kinds of terrain you're talking about don't provide the concealment infantry teams need to make sneak attacks on armor or other targets. Steppes are merely plains. Open farmland and river banks don't provide concealment either. Mountains and hills may work but from what I've read on this forum, there have been problems with infantry hiding on reverse slopes. You seem to think that there will be forests to hide in. Well, I hope you're right. CC3 didn't have any. Maybe that's because every map was a "snow map" in the dead of winter. Here's hoping that CM2 won't be the same thing and that infantry will play a big part in the game. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There were a number of forested maps in CC3. Not sure which campaigns they were for, but if you played the Grand Campaign, once you were pushed out of the first city you invaded you counterattacked against the Russians on wooded, non winter ground. Also, Stalingrad was not winter terrain in CC3... That's as far as I got before getting fed up(mostly with the scale. 48 men or so per side and a couple tanks fought the battle for the Tractor Works?).

Cow machine gun which absorbs water? Is this code?

I can field this one. So maybe you should rethink your topic choice. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by russellmz: 66. Board and CD-rom World War Two games: their assumptions and their politics. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> An assumption of WWII computer games is that you can sneak into Castle Wolfenstein, aka Hitlers bunker, find a uniform to wear, and then show guards your colored passcard for different floors of the castle when they said "Halt, Komenzie, Actung", and then "Heil" once they looked at your card(but they'd say it in a throaty, evil German accent that came out of a TV speaker). After doing all this, and gunning down a few hapless guards here and there, you could put a bomb in Hitlers bunker, and then watch as he addressed some flunkies just before he and they blew up.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by M. Bates: Just asking this, because the aspects of CM1 are quite a bit different to CM2. In this first game, the Allies are advancing and pushing back the Germans, it is a very mobile, "fluid" kind of game, which is fine. But in CM2 the two sides were digging in a lot, partly because of their conditions, and also because of the way the war was going. So will CM2 be simulating this type of trench warfare? [This message has been edited by M. Bates (edited 09-24-2000).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I don't know. The east had some dug in fighting, but it was probably more Blitzkreigey than the late war in the west. The west had some dug in fighting, too. I guess it's a matter of the scale of CM. Since it can handle Battalions, and such, it would seem pretty fine to have a scenario focus on a specific area of a specific battle(like the tractorworks at Stalingrad, for instance), and not deal with long, drawn out entrenchment(as CM's time scale is 120 minute battles, max). In a scenario for CM2, you could have an attack on a fortified line just the same as in CM. Just because the conditions and tactics may have been different when dealing with armies, etc, doesn't mean that there was that much of a difference between an assault in the east than the west. You just tend to throw more men casually into it in the east(if you're Russian). The goal is still to overrun the enemy position. Trenches could be added, though, easily if they acted like foxholes graphically(but provided greater cover when the game crunches turns). But were trenches common in the east? The idea that they were seems to go against German doctrine at the time(mobility, mobility, mobility), though I must confess I'm not sure one way or the other. I know there was a lot of use of rubble in the city fighting, and foxholes are a dime a dozen, but trench warfare seems so... World War I.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rob/1: I know about the jeg thanks. Do you know of any good providers for HTML the onw I am useing is not vere good. Rob <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'm not sure I understand this clearly. The ISP you use shouldn't have anything to do with the HTML you put up for public viewing(beyond storing it on thier servers, that is). The page loaded fine(pretty quick, and I think that @home is pretty close to the backbone so it shouldn't be causing you any problems). How is your provider giving you problems?

Ditto here with the image. In the source code the image tag is set as img SRC="cm%20eter.jpg", which looks wrong, as a % isn't a valid filename character. You may have mis-typed it while entering it?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: Hi Pham, Interesting suggestion. All run the idea of spreading them out by Charles. As for making them smaller, I would think that would make them harder to see. But I suppose we could play around with the size at some point and see if they could be made smaller without affecting gameplay. Steve<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Any chance of them being relative to the view you're using in some way? They look fine in 4 view, but if you go down to 1 view or so they tend to look like the units are firing those Star Wars blasters unless you move the camera view pretty far away.

To simulate a moonless night with clouds blocking the stars, you could turn the monitor off. That would make the game more challenging at any rate.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by POL: I am new to CM and have to say I love it. I have a question about moving and targeting. If I want a unit to crawl to location A and then target another unit when in reaches location A (not as it travels to location A), how do I go about placing the order. Is it possible? When I try this, it seems that the unit will simultaneously target the unit in question and crawl to location A. I would greatly appreciate any help. Pol. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I tested this, and here's how the move orders work. Run and move orders to units that have targeted the enemy will move and run while firing. Crawl will override the fire order, and they just crawl and don't stop to fire or anything. However, they tend to shoot first, which is no good if you're repositioning them to surprise the enemy. You can't really do anything about this that I can see. Even issuing the hide order after the target and crawl orders won't work, as targeting overrides hide. Best suggestion, which does work but isn't perfect, issue just the crawl order but make the destination far enough so that the unit can't get there in one turn. On the next orders phase target the enemy, and the troops will keep crawling, without firing but while still keeping a lock on the target. Once they stop crawling they'll spring up and fire. Won't work for very short crawling distances, or on units that don't have or lose LOS while crawling, though. But, it will work the same as if they had crawled to a position without targeting anything, then targeted the unit you wanted them to. Hope this helps.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mark IV: You're right, of course. But I like to try all the tools in the box to see what works, and this helps me track my ground-pounders. Real life commanders are much more likely to take a recon flight to 3000m every 60 seconds, have their squads affix 20x20m orange panels to their boots, and ask them to refight each minute of action 2 or 3 times. But I have to compromise with reality due to my limited conceptual abilities. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> You're... mocking me, aren't you?

I'd like to see an option(and I mean option, as I'm sure not everyone will agree with these) to make tracers shorter, thinner, and/or more scattered with area fire than direct targeting. For the scattering, let me explain: If there are three tracers from each burst of MG fire at an area, could one follow the far right of the firing arc, one go to the center, and one follow the far left? That way I'd have some idea of how large an area I was suppressing. As it is now I have to lay down multiple area fire orders to feel comfortable that I've covered a treeline(or whatever). The thinner, shorter request is second to the one I just explained. I just think that they're too long and thick as it is. Oh, and if not for CM as a patch, then maybe for CM2?

Realistic scale, no bases, etc. At 3 view or lower if you can watch movie quality battles occur, with tanks scurrying between buildings(instead of partially through them), units in houses(instead of hovering above a fondation), and so on. I tried going back to +2 scale, but it didn't seem right after so long on +0. I tend to watch each battle area a time or two, then watch the full battle once straight through on 7 or 8 view with bases on(it's just moving bases with a dot in the from that height). This gives a good sense of enemy movement and directions of attack, which I wouldn't get without it due to the small scale and units being hidden by terrain easier. You +2, +3, +4 people are weird. I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course, but at those scales it's like a sceen from Godzilla. "We must call Mothra! The mutant infantrymen are destroying the city! Hai!"

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Airborne: Congrats and good luck. My son was born on July 10th. Bout a week before I discovered CM. Two wonderful events in a very short time. About did me in---still may...... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I've got to warn you, they trick you when they're infants. My kids are (almost)6 and 4, and while they were all quiet and cute and stuff at first(ok, they're still cute), they develope voices... Now it's Dad, dad, dad,dad, dad, dad, dad, and they don't even seem to grasp the importance of what I'm doing when I tell them that I've got to open up the Son Bridge, ASAP, or the Allied advance will grind to a halt and that they should bug thier mother. Has any CO ever successfully completed a dangerous attack behind the enemy lines with thier kids yelling in thier ear? I doubt it, and I haven't read any history accounts to the contrary. Though, on the plus side, my 4 year old daughter asks me, "when I get bigger can I play Combat Mission?" every few days, then goes and announces that she can to her friends...