karch

OK, throwing my hat into the ring... I've really enjoyed this thread and the thought of skirts and mesh originally developed to help defeat ATR shots is very interesting and has some very good points. I have to say I'm still convinced by the standard history line that skirts and mesh were developed to halt shaped charge munitions. Does anyone know how early the Germans were using shaped charge against tanks? I know glider troops used them against fort Eben Emal. Large shaped charge demolition charges. If they had early panzerfaust, shaped charge for low velocity 75s or that huge shaped charge that stuck down the barrel of the 37mm. If these came out the same time as armoured skirts, I'd say the skirts were developed to stop shaped charges. My reasoning is that the Germans figured the Russians would see how powerful shaped charge weapons were, copy them and the Germans would be up against them quickly. I'm on the "skirts were to stand off shaped charge weapons" side... and any help they were against ATRs was secondary or just a happy coincidence. But that's just my opinion.. nothing to back it up. Does anyone know how closely German shaped charge and German armoured skirts were developed? Scott Karch [This message has been edited by karch (edited 03-22-2001).]

IIRC, BTS said that there would be NO multi turreted tanks in CM2 - East Front. The engine just does not support them. No T-28, T-35, SMK, M3 Grant/Lee It's a bummer, I really wanted to see a Grant/Lee and T-35. I may be wrong, but that's what I remember reading. Scott Karch

I've got 12 going and it's tough. I work a lot and go through streaks of returning turns. This weekend I had more free time than usual and turned around about 48 turns or so... sometimes it's only one a week or every few days. I'm addicted though... or seeing how I get beat so often... a masochist. Scott

I run CM on an iBook and iMac and both run just fine. The new iMacs have 16Meg of VRAM and can use system memory to act as additional VRAM if needed. The new iMacs sound like a nice upgrade from previous models. I love my iBook, but with the screen supported 1024x768 instead of 800x600. The 8Meg of VRAM seems to work well so far. Scott

I play CM on an iBook and iMac, each with only 8Meg of VRAM, so I would LOVE some more low res mods. Some of the mods I have DLd are beautiful, but my VRAM just can't hold all the textures. Scott

My guess as to why there weren't 16" guns at Normandy was because all the newer BBs with 16" guns were all in the Pacific fighting the Japanese. There was a better chance of running into ships to fight against the Japanese and the 16" guns would be better, so the Pacific theater got all the newer BBs. Europe probably got older BBs with 14s just for shore bombardments. Scott

Very cool site Crockett. Great movie of the cutter in action. Although, it's a quicktime movie not an animated gif. Scott

I like the idea... except that I was under the impression that the Grant/Lee would not be included in CM2 because the current engine does not support multiple MAIN guns. Scott

As for how the hedgerow cutters work... They are sometimes named Cullins Hedgerow Cutters for the GI, Cullins, that came up with the idea. They took steel from beach obstacles, heavy angle irons... steel bent at 90 degrees, like an L and welded it sticking out straight from the tank's front edge. When the tank got to the hedgerow, instead of starting to drive up and over it, the teeth would grab into the mound and all the tanks momentum and power would be used to push through the hedgerow. It must have been a lot of work and not too fast depending on the power of the tank and the size of the hedgerow. I'm sure the teeth helped cut through some of the lower roots in the hedgerow but a lot of the hedgerow was just pushed out of the way by the tank. I may be wrong, but that's the way I understand them to work. Scott Karch

What distances would you all recommend for: 1) 2 tanks in leapfrog - overwatch. How far ahead is too far. 2) infantry with tanks. Should the tanks be right behind the infantry for support... 50 yards to keep them shielded more from enemy zooks/schrecks 3) infantry squads in movement and when positioned for defence. scott

33yrs old..

mac (G4, iMac, iBook) Mac 19 PC 19

I used to live outside of London... know where East Horsley is? In between Effingham and Guilford. Great time.. While I lived there, first class airmail took between 10-14 days. The absolute fastest was 7 days. So I'd just hold off for a little while. Sorry to say that, but it's probably just still en route. scott

Just curious if BTS had thought about adding any scripting capabilities to Combat Mission. This would really help out with creating tools to help automating the opening, playing and renaming of pbem files as well as possibly creating an app to play movies back to back automatically. Also curious about BTS take on OS X. If CM plays in compatability mode inside OS 9.1 I'd guess you'd leave the program as is until the 3rd combat mission when you rewrite the engine. Any comments??? Thanks for the great game. Scott Karch

I'd have to venture yes. Think about how fast a Garand can run through bullets and how many clips you would need if you were in a heavy firefight or laying down heavy covering fire for the troops ahead of you. Not to mention MGs. I think if you really tried, you could fire off all the ammo you could possibly carry within 5-7 minutes. The only thing that is difficult is finding ways to not fire on every unit in LOS at 200M and waste ammo. Hiding is the only real option, but I'm always afraid someone will rush them while they are hiding. Karch

I like them all. I have a couple games that we specifically agreed to obscene ahistorical units. I play historical scenarios I also have a few QBs where we do our best to pick accurate OOBs and keep views to level 1 or 2 and not too much viewing from the opponent's side. Makes for a very different game. They all have their place. No right or wrongs. Just what you enjoy... SO GO ENJOY!

It doesn't look like it, but does anyone know if Combat Mission supports Applescript on the Mac? If it is scriptable, I may be able to script the playback of files one after another. On the PC app, it has to reload the full map and textures between movies right? So there would be a pretty big pause between movies. Just curious

Gotta say you PC users have us Mac users there. The Mac OS is using the same memory scheme it has since 1984. All applications are assigned a specific amount of RAM to take. If it doesn't need it all it's wasted... if it isn't enough, your program will run slow or not at all. I'm really used to it.. it's kinda neat seeing how well apps run with more or less RAM but I agree it is a very old way of handling RAM.... Now when OS X (that's 10 not the letter X) comes out next month, any application written for it will be able to dynamically take as much RAM as it needs and release it when it doesn't need it... that is, at least for programs reworked for X. OS X is based on UNIX so we will have some real power under the hood. Preemptive multi-tasking, true multi-threaded, better virtual memory, and dynamic memory allocation... Yeah, I know NT has this stuff already.. but I'm a Mac guy and love it. scott karch

If anyone has a game file ready to crunch... a really big one.... send it my way. I'll test it on a G4 with 256M, iMac400 with 192M and an iBook with 192M. I'll posst times and the file on my web site and have people give me crunch times to compare processors. Scott scott@facilitywiz.com

I'm really curious about speed tests.. I use both Macs and PCs at work and home. Would anyone want to set up one of the turns you were just mentioning and just before hitting GO save the game.. Post it on a web site and have different PC and Mac users open it and resolve the turn (hit GO). I'm really curious what times we would get back. I'm really curious about Duron, Athlon and PIII/IV machines... as well as G3 and G4s Macs. Anyone interested in the test.. I'd host the file on my site if needed. I want it to be a real bear of a turn to resolve though. karch

bump... just curious if anyone feels the method above would be an ad-hoc solution.

hotseat is good if you can get a friend or opponent you trust (that leaves out all cesspoolers ) to your house to play. You both share one computer and there is a lot of jumping out of the single chair as you change turns... If you have the equipment, two computers networked... the fastest way to play.. over the net or over a home LAN is via IP. This way you both place your orders at the same time. Halves the playing time of most games.. if not more. Set your timer uncomfortably low and you can get some really hairy games. Scott Karch

if you really want to use random turn ending with cm QBs.... why not try this 1. setup the qb to have slightly more turns than you need - say 35 instead of 30 2. agree with you oponent on what turn to start rolling to end.. say 28 3. on turn 28 until 35, use a web based dice roolin site that will email the die roll to both members.. http://www.irony.com/mailroll.html if you want a 10% chance, roll 1 10 sided die with 10 ending the game.. all others keep playing. 4. when a stop roll has been made, both sides request cease fire.. what do you think??

To extract sounds out of the game resource files try this app - http://www.riccisoft.com/files/soundextractor-131.hqx It's called sound extractor and works great. A little quirky now that I'm running OS 9.1 You have to click on the progress indicator for each file to be extracted. Click on it and you will see. It names them well. Then go get a copy of Sound Studio http://www.versiontracker.com/redir.fcgi/kind=1&id=4122/sound_studio_1.5.4.sit.bin Use the Normalize command to reduce the dynamic range of the sounds (the difference between quiet and lout) and then reduce the overall volume with the amplify command. It seems to work really well. All you need to do is use the Mac Mod tool to replace the sound you just removed. 1) extract sound 2) edit volume and dynamic range 3) put sound back into resource file That should do it. Email me or post if you have problems or other Mac tech questions. Love to help. -this message was written on a Mac! -

Very impressive Mr. Ameritech.net Lots of good points to learn from. I'm pretty poor at setting up good defences and pretty poor at attacks How do you log the battle AAR. Do you keep a notepad or word processing document open and type turn by turn? I'd like to keep a running AAR of some of my games and trade back with my opponent after the battle so we can see what our strategy was.... even if it doesn't pan out. regards Scott Karch