IPA

Otto, Don't be so hard on yourself. Bet I could out knucklehead you any time. Try typing this for the search: Historical Maps of WWII Europe IPA

Try Amazon.co.uk, it's there. Even with P+P I think it works out to be about the same price. IPA

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: As for QUOTEs and stuff, check out: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ubbcode.html Now, on to the ammo loads... As for ammo loads with team serviced AT weapons... they are accurate. Been gone over many, many times in fact and the loadouts have not been found to be incorrect. As for extra ammo being carried by someone other than the team, sure it is possible in real life if they actually had access to extra ammo in the first place (and that is questionable). Just as it was for them to carry extra ammo for a MG or something. But this is impossible for us to simulate so you get only what the team can carry. Steve<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I guess what I was really asking was does the standard load out already include ammo carried by other platoon members. Answer yes. Eg 3" mortar - 3 men, mortar, stand, base plate, personal weapons, 55 HE and 11 smoke rounds. Without assistance, if they move they'd always have to leave some ammo behind (I can see why they can't run now). "As for extra ammo being carried by someone other than the team, sure it is possible in real life if they actually had access to extra ammo in the first place (and that is questionable)." I'm wasn't specific enough. For attacking units (non-motorised) at the "beginning" of operations where they were not expected to be supplied in the field for several days. IPA

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kingfish: IPA, There are 2 ways to add quotes from other posts: 1) above each post there are 4 buttons, one of which is a "Reply with quote". 2) next time you post look to the left of the text window and you'll see a button labeled "UBB code is on". Click on that and it will explain it all to you. Hope this helps.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks Kingfish IPA

I'm with you on the burning buildings feature. I don't think it was such a rare thing as to not be considered. I've read several examples of setting fire to buildings as a street fighting tactic. I also have a specific example of intentional fire starting using MG incendiary rounds (Band of Brothers). IPA

First question. After all this time I still don't know how to set in quotes for previous messages. Stupid huh? Could someone please enlighten me. Germanboy, No I don't mean that my sharpshooters, score every time. Except for the odd instance when "5 guys" get taken out, it seems that when they do hit it's generally one guy at a time. It just seems they expend their limited ammo way too fast. 3 shots a minute? After four minutes you may as well withdraw standard load sharp shooters off the map. You're right about the low state being not being feasible, as their treatment as guns is in the hard code. Either ammo loads could increased or rate of fire could be reduced if BTS were to consider the change. Slapdragon, I agree with the pop up tactics. But from what I've seen, it seems once they start shooting they don't stop until they're out. ie within a minute they use up several shots that are beyond your control. Maybe I'm just not paying enough attention. Do either of you have any comments on my AT comments? I've just finished reading Burgett's "The road to Arnhem". Though I can't vouch for whether he's 100% accurate (he telling his story from a paratrooper "grunt" perspective), on page 24 he states: "Machine Gunners and Mortar men could not possibly carry heavy weapons and all the ammo needed to sustain them through several days and nights of fighting......so each man (in the platoon) carried a couple of cans of MG ammunition, at least two mortar rounds, a couple of bazooka rockets.....smoke grenades". (OT - Ah the old smoke grenade issue) Thanks IPA

Really excellent! Thanks again Kump and Magua. Keep em coming. IPA

Can anyone out there confirm that the standard ammunition load outs for AT Teams in CM is accurate? I think the standard load of 6 rounds for a AT team sounds about right. The way it stands I treat my AT teams as precious commodities and conserve my ammo wherever possible for high probability kills (which is the way it should be). Increasing the standard load out would allow players to be less picky about their hit probabilities especially in the short time periods that each CM battle represents. However, my understanding is that for support units such as AT and Mortars, the burden of carrying extra ammunition was distributed amongst the other members of the platoon. If the standard load is historically too low, I like the idea that during the initial setup an AT or mortar team could have a higher load out, but if they move the remaining ammo should then be reduced only to what they could actually carry. I recall somewhere in the manual that this is already simulated if a mortar team suffers casualties and it moves. Alternatively if ammunition runs out for AT teams there could be a very limited "LOW" ammunition feature that simulates them scrounging rounds from the rest of the platoon as with standard unit types. The enforcist is on "very low" and this could be built in as a very low possibility random factor. For sharpshooters I think the ammunition load is two low. Except for the odd instance, it is a case of one shot one kill. The number of shots per minute could be reduced however. I'd also like to see the standard "low" ammunition feature with sharp shooters rather than "out of ammo". My 2p IPA

Magua, Colchester, that's only 20 minutes from from my home town. I'll be flying back for Christmas, maybe we could meet up for pint or two. As you can see, those fantastic mods of yours have caused quite a stir. Well done mate. IPA

Magua, Beautiful, really beautiful. Please don't stop there. I know it must have taken ages to do those, but with talent like that, it would be great if you could do more variants for different styles of buildings in Europe. Then we could pick and choose mods suitable for each battle location. I know I'm asking too much. Wonderful work. IPA ------------------ "Surrender? Tell them to go to hell."

31, married for two years, a one year old son, he's fantastic. Mrs is a long suffering Computer wargame widow. IPA ------------------ "Surrender? Tell them to go to hell."

I just posted this on the main forum, but for all you dedicated scenario designers out there, this site is an absolute gem if you're stuck for an OOB. http://www.britwar.co.uk/lists/index.htm Thanks for all the hard work, it is very much appreciated. IPA ------------------ "Surrender? Tell them to go to hell."

Rainbow Six, Try this one, it has a lot of formations and it's pretty detailed. http://www.britwar.co.uk/lists/index.htm IPA ------------------ "Surrender? Tell them to go to hell."

I've also found them pretty handy for taking out open top halftracks at fairly close to medium range. My understanding is that the 2" was a fairly standard mini support for British platoons and that's why they're fixed in the Platoon OOBs. It was light and quickly set up, if you think about it having local light mortar support on immediately call at platoon level is a pretty useful asset. A few old vets I know (including my old man for one, used them in jungle fighting during the Indonesian Confrontation in the 60's)still swear by them. IPA ------------------ "Surrender? Tell them to go to hell."

Hope they listen Bill. IPA

Using right click and drag to adjust way/end points is quick and easy for fine tuning. I also like to use the overhead view. IPA

Steve, IMHO allowing a feature to adjust squad sizes kind of goes hand in hand with adjustment of platoon compositions. The topic of this thread for some of the posters deals with the exactitudes of fine tuning OOBs to fit the historical situation. Many of the scenario designers out there have carried out in depth research into their various battles. In the process of doing so, they may have been able to come up with very detailed historical OOBs and would want to recreate them in CM as closely as possible. I could send you historical OOBs that I simply can't accurately create because of the limitations of the editor. Some units types have too many variants to be included in the standard TO&E. Having the flexibly to adjust this ourselves would be nice, but sounds like a lot of work for a minor feature. Your comments on the German Kampfgruppes are fair. Anyway, it's just a wish list. Your decisions are always well reasoned and if you don't think it's worth it, wish not granted, fair enough. Thank you for the beautiful game. IPA

I second Red Devils' comments. I also enjoyed CC, but it was a disappointment after CC2, they really lost the plot. The CC4 strategic layer was IMHO a pile of crap. What bugged me about about CC was they had historical maps, but there was really no point because the size of forces in any given battle were too small to be historical. This demonstrates the limitations of pure real time wargames, as the number of units has to be small in order to maintain some order of coordinated control. Still ended up in click fests at times though. However, saying that, I was pretty much glued to CC2 for a couple of years and had a lot of fun. West Front can be a micro management nightmare especially when you get up to divisional size battles (it's turn based and unit scale - Platoons and Support Sections). It's also hexed based, I couldn't go back to hexes after CM. If WF had a CM "we go" combat resolution system it would be a much improved gaming experience. Dare I say it, but WF contains an excellent and flexible OOB editor which uses windows sub-folders and contains comprehensive templates for just about every major unit type on the Western Front. It's a useful source for CM if you're stuck for an OOB. IPA ------------------ "Surrender? Tell them to go to hell."

"Lighten up Francis...." LOL, from the movie "Stripes" I believe. IPA

Steve If you're considering allowing squads to be modified in the Unit Editor, is there a possibility of being able to modify the standard Platoon composition templates as well (I'm not talking about reducing the number of squads only) I'd comment that the existing Platoons Compositions are accurate, but these represent their full war establishments, I'd like to be able to recreate adhoc platoon compositions. We all know that during the late war the Germans were very skilled at scraping together any available units into adhoc formations. Another reason would be that certain unit types had many variants as to platoon composition. Eg British Engineers. I might know for a given historical battle an engineer platoon had 30 men in three squads. The standard template has two squads and a flamethrower. Here I can do away with the flamethrower, but I can't replace this with another squad. To get the numbers up I'd have to purchase another platoon and reduce it to say a Platoon HQ and one squad. The way platoon command and control is simulated in CM is excellent, so I wouldn't want to compromise this with the extra HQ. IPA

Are you sure that they didn't split the squads? IPA ------------------ "Surrender? Tell them to go to hell."

I'm with you on this one. I guess the fact that the defending side automatically digs in is the way prepared positions are simulated in CM, which could include sand bagged positions (even though they're stated as foxholes), although this is not graphically illustrated. Maybe what you're looking for, is something more substantial such as field fortifications and entrenchment networks, but this would require a new terrain tile and I believe that BTS have already stated that they won't be making any new ones for CMBO. It would be a nice addition. IPA ------------------ "Surrender? Tell them to go to hell."

I promised myself that I wouldn't respond further on this debate, but frankly I couldn't let the "Urquhart should have been court martialled" statement go. That is an outrageous ill considered conclusion which appears to be based on a single source, even though that source (A Bridge Too Far) attaches no great blame on any command decision errors that Urquhart made during the battle. As far as I'm concerned once Monty's plan was set, there was nothing that Urquhart in his limited capacity (a division commander) could have done during the planning stage or battle any differently to change the final outcome of the Battle of Arnhem. The writing was on the wall. Ryan's book is a classic and is largely responsible for the great interest in Market Garden to this day. But in line with "Sailor Malan's" comments "A Bridge Too Far" is not the definitive account of OMG and contains numerous jumbled sequences of events and factual errors. Enough said. There have been literally dozens of books on the subject, but what must be considered the two definitive accounts of The Battle of Arnhem are from the British perspective - Martin Middlebrook's "Arnhem 1944 - The Airborne Battle" and from the German perspective - Kershaw's "It Never Snows In September". Middlebrook goes into great detail on the hour by hour progress of the battle down to platoon level and provides very detailed OOB's (Kershaw similarly but not quite as detailed as he deals with the whole of OMG). As such both are excellent resources for accurately creating CM Arnhem scenarios. IPA

Magua, Sorry about you're uncle. There's still a very huge following of people who travel over to Holland every year in remembrance. Iron Cross for one. "Lest we forget". You're from Essex (in your profile)? I'm from Sudbury in Suffolk (sad, I know), but I'm working overseas now. Thanks for the reply. IPA

Flipper, I think you're kind of missing the jist of the thread, which was purely to pay tribute to those brave boys on a significant day in history. I suggest you read "A Bridge Too Far" again. It's a book about tragedy, human endurance, bravery and the fighting spirit. If the only striking feature of book was that Montgomery was ****e, I think you kind of missed that jist too. I'm British, but I don't rate Montgomery either. Maybe you should start your own thread on that one. IPA