Giftig

The Carter place, eh? That has lain fallow and abandoned since Jebediah's boy matriculated from the Conservatory in Boston, after the strange exsanguination of his uncle Ishmael in the amphibian mire he kept near the house for his "genetical researches", as he used to expound upon on the rare occcasion of his perambulations into the damp, dreary but somehow human and inspiring environs of Arkham Center itself, as he sullenly loaded his strangely old-fashioned conveyance with sundry dry goods and strange devices and appurtances incessantly ordered by telegraph from obscure merchants in distant Providence or bustling, other-worldly New York City, strange with the lines of hand-made glassware and un-named, vaguely hideous outlines distorted to near-madness by the near-rotten canvas and grimey oilcloth shrouds he wrapped them before bringing them out into the sparse, thin light of the Arkham day. Ah, yes, my cogitations unwillingly recover the events of that year well, despite attempts to force them from my unwilling mind in the dark loneliness of the night-bed of memory, and I will no doubt carry certain images which I hesitate to describe to my grave, where I can finally let them fly into the eternal mystery and comforting nothingness of death's sleep - unless, as I fear, my connection to these events renders even the final mystery one of unending and soul-wrenching horror, the likes of which I cannot explain to one who has not experienced what I have, without reference to those seemingly innocent events of that year of our awakening to the true possibilities of ancient evil in the world around us, unsensed, unseen, unsmelled, but omnipresent, and waiting, waiting, with dread tentacled eyes and shuddering limbs... I find I must compose myself. Was that the place you meant, or should I clarify further?

I have had success with a sniper in an assault. I used him on the flank of an infantry platoon, about 100 m out to the right and maybe 50m ahead of the platoon. I'd move him to a safe area in a woods, then the platoon would come in. As the enemy units re-positioned, any that came near him took fire, and dropped where they were. This gave the platoon an easy assault, since the sniper was protecting the flank. By the time the opponent figured it out and could move to attack him, the first squads were retreating, and they came under fire from the platoon. And then he started popping the guys who were retreating. I ended up capturing a lot of guys from the German company that they dealt with. The sniper eventually opened up on a Tiger and an assault gun, conning them into moving into a zone of fire, but taking one casualty in the process. Both tanks died from flank shots at close range from an M-10. So snipers can be useful.

I've had trouble like that before, and I had to delete them and download them again. Some I just could not open. Are you patched up to date?

I like the optional Historical OOB's best. This would let players agree on whether to play "real world" or "free form". I also think that the idea of a base value increase for all vehicles - or maybe diff ones by class, or overall armor coverage - is a good idea.

I did the high-traffic stuff and all that, but went for a more devious solution. When I upgraded from my P2-450 to an 800, my wife got the old one - and a copy of Asheron's Call. (She used to play D&D a lot, back in the day). She now puts more time in on that than I do on all my games. Moral: Identify her game weakness and set her up with her new hobby...

It seems to me that this issue can be handled at the unit purchase level. The problem here is that sorting out "gamey" intents from "real world" intents cannot be done in game play. Instead of inferring it at the end by penalizing losses, how about simply letting the players do it? DYO games would be broken into two categories - "free for all", the current system, where if I have enough points I can laager 15 JagdTigers and have a ball; and "Historically Based". The latter would put the player into a screen where they select units BY OOB - a standard infantry company, a platoon of recon vehicles, an armored battalion, etc. Each level of organization would have essentially "slots" to fill or leave empty - an infantry company would consist of 3 combat platoons plus 2 support units per platoon and a command platoon, for example. Any overloading of a formation - attachments, effectively, coming from other formations nearby - would cost double for the first added formation, triple for the second, etc, and that cost would be reflected in loss penalties. This would represent the difficulty in requesting and rounding up units of a certain type and allocating them to one formation preferentially. The standard cost for a formation would be subtracted from the player's total; a player who is short might end up stripping off some elements to make his number. This would allow "depleted" formations. This would leave the players with a historically accurate base of units, and the option to add more and more - or remove some - but paying more and more as they move away from what is historically likely. In this way, a player who plays at a company size game, but grabs jeeps instead of infantry, will find himself so encumbered by the increasing cost of the jeeps that it will not be worth it. And that fits with the reaction of a real commander to a request for 25 50 cal jeeps to conduct an assault, I'd imagine. It also might reflect the effort needed to assign and attach units from other formations as assets in an attack. Comments? Too hard to implement, maybe?

Yeah, but AIM users will be AOL users, on the whole. Could improve your ladder standings, heh heh...

Well, that works. Or you can select another unit in the same org (platoon, whatever), then use the +/- keys to toggle to the one in the pillbox. Pretty fast and easy. My problem was getting the guys to attack one from the rear. I finally targetted the thing and had them walk onto it, they eventually figured it out and snuffed the gun.

Flamethrowers can induce a crew to leave their tank without setting it on fire or injuring any of them. Saw a PzIV crew bail when they were ambushed by a flamethrower - no damage reported but they got out really fast lol. Also turned back 2 squads coming with it, they just spun on their heels. Fairly amusing.

I had a situation where some guys from one platoon advanced to where their were Germans directly in front of them. Also in front of them and 45 degrees to the right, were some friendlies firing at the Germans, about 75m off. They opened fire on the friendlies for a few seconds - no casualties - before the idiot Wehrmacht guys fired at them and drew their attention. Anyone had friendly fire vehicle casualties?

Just wanted to let folks know that I get lots of graphics weirdness with FSAA on, which disappears when it is turned off. Guillemot/Hercules Prophet GTS 2 32mb. The glitches were corrupted text fields (unit name was "open groundield"), moving static on the unit info detail sheets, furry letters and numbers, and finally crashing as the turn was processed. Just FYI. Turning this off fixed everything.

Coincidence is a wonderful thing (and dude, you blew the punchline, missed the wording lol). Anyway, I recall in 1980 seeing this list with a number of other things added to show that Reagan would be assassinated. Naturally, it is now somewhat truncated lol. Anyway, there are any number of odd coincidences that can be pulled out of common relationships. For example, I believe it was Martin Gardner who derived the major numbers and dates of Christian dogma from the relations found between parts of a bicycle. Just goes to show that humans are good at finding patterns, but rather poor at interpreting them.

"However, bearing in mind that it IS still a game and an approximation of something real, what is wrong with making scouting a little easier - i.e. making a different compromise to enhance gameplay?" In all this discussion, and reading of the others, I think you miss an essential point. The only "pre-scouting" info the planning guys get before-hand will be second-hand at best: from maps, from reports made by someone who has been there, etc. And once on the scene, it's hard to judge from several hundred meters away, or over a hill, or inside a building, whether you want to put guys 15 meters inside the tree line, or only 5. I feel that the "1" and "2" views give you an approximation that is accurate *to* *this* *level*. When you allow point-to-point exact assessment of LOS, you literally exceed any reasonable real world foreknowledge available. In effect, you would have to run someone out to each point with a radio and a clear goal just to *gather* that info, before or during the game. It really exceeds even arguable realism and moves into the realm of impossible knowledge. The only exception I can see is for a prepared defense, where the command elements can literally walk the battlefield; this kind of set-piece encounter is probably the least likely for a WWII conflict, assuming as it does days or more of undisturbed access to the position and the mapping of every little terrain obstruction, with terrain cards for every fixed weapon and the ranges all mapped out. The time it takes to settle into a position usefully is also a reflection of the skill of the commander. "Okay, Lt. Jones, take your men and set up in the treeline over there. I want you to prepare an ambush on the road; we might have bad people coming through there in a few minutes." If Lt. Jones eyeballs it and sends troops in, then finds out that he's got them too close to the road and hence visible, he's now got a tactical problem to deal with - just like in real life. But with Magic LOS String, this would never happen, not even in a night airdrop, or on a rainy day with limited visibility... It just ain't right...And furthermore, I don't think it would be as much *fun*...

I have the same card. I use 0 mipmap levels, bilinear, best quality. I turned fog table emulation and adjust Z-Buffer depth on. Texel alignment is center. I'm using the 353 version drivers. I guess, start from these settings, and see how it does. I don't *think* mine does what you describe...

My friend has the same problem. Any ideas? We really want to play, or at least get him off of my system.

A Walk In The Sun The Beast Aliens (Yeah, it *is* a war movie!) The Hidden Fortress Kagemusha

Hmmm...Just for reference, I have a P2-400 oc'd to 450 recently, with 128mb RAM and a TNT2 card. I saw no slowdowns or chunkiness at either speed - after I turned off the video shadowing in the ROM BIOS, and set the AGP max transfer size to 256. If you *are* seeing some slowness, try those two BIOS settings. They worked for me. In fact, the AGP aperture change was reocmmended by my video board maker on a slip in the box - easy to miss but very effective. No guarantee they won't cause your system to go belly up and die, but hey, that's just a disclaimer. These are pretty common tweaks. The AGP cards can usually handle larger texture transfers, so the 256 setting helps smooth performance, and their memory is usually faster than main RAM and big enough to do the job, so ROM shadowing is no longer needed. Hope this helps.

I'd say this forces more coordination between units, and the AI ensures that you can't fight "to the last counter", or send out 3 guys, counting on 1 of them to survive cause there are only 2 defenders. It's got better command and control, although ideally I'd like a way for the armor to be commanded by the AI or some such. Still seems strange for me to be able to get a tank to pop out at the right minute - what, do I detail a guy with a radio to stand next to it, or something? I do very much like the line of sight and FOW features. Again, they aid in tactical thinking. As an example of all this, I have a building assault going on in a game I'm playing. In ASL, I'd do it the same way here - covering fire from one unit, two units advancing from different axes. But in this game I can tell that the guys are moving around inside the building, I know that my me will respond quickly cause their commander is nearby, and I also know that the simultaneous advance from two sides is likely to surprise the unit, especially since it can't really split it's fire. I also have to worry that they will try to ambush the attackers, or move out of sight of the covering unit, all that stuff. So I have some additional info, and I can do more with it. As much as I loved ASL, this is a greater accomplishment. Buy a good book on WWII tactics, and remember, when in doubt, attack!

Could this also be finessed by requiring that a vehicle which pops smoke must reverse to cover, or otherwise take some additional action to secure their safety? Or perhaps they should be forced to re-acquire after the smoke clears, lengthening the time between smoke discharges? My thinking here is that if a situation warrants the use of a hasty smoke screen, it would presumably be used to cover a move, not just to allow the tank to sit there waiting for something to happen. In real life, if someone pops smoke and doesn't move, I suspect I could whang a shell into them with dispatch, just by firing at the center of the screen. Is there a valid tactical reason for a tank to advance into fire, pop smoke and just sit there? Doesn't seem so to me, but then I'm not a professional...