WWB

I think 3 setup zones might have made sense 3 years back, when 1000-1500 point battles was in the mid- to high- end of engagement sizes. But now, that has become the low end, with most scenarios and many qbs being significantly larger. I can hardly count the number of times I sat there, stared at the map, and wished I had but one more color to make this deployment work. I understand that you might well run into the problem of a lack of distinctive colors. Most of us here are males, and see about 8 colors according to reports, but I am sure we can handle it somehow. Another thing has come to mind: In CMBO, a cease-fire during an operation just makes one play that battle over. It would be nice if one could cease-fire their way into the next battle. I wholeheartedly agree with Michael's statements above. He pretty much sums up my main point: give us more options and we designers will make you look real good. WWB WWB

Yes, Lindan, I did get that name from Warpie. He took great pleasure in reducing it to rubble. I too am glad we had a nice, civil debate on this subject. Very rare on this BBS, and all the more constructive. I too hope for massive improvements in the Operations Engine for CMII, but lets worry about the task at hand: CMBB. Steve, I claimed in a previous post that I had one last request, but I lied. I was drinking heavily and discovered one more little, simple expansion which would help designers greatly: Give us more setup zone colors. 3 is not enough, especially for larger battles. Moreover, it would help one 'guide' the AI's deployment a bit more. I suspect this is a bit more involved than my last couple suggestions, but would be well worth it in the long run. Thanks for listening. WWB

My backup is a bit odd, I use an my old 4gb HDD, formatted as NTFS, and un-useable to anything but one special account that I don't ever use save to back things up. So I periodically login as the backup user, copy the data to the drive, then logout. It is protected from physical failure (separate disk) and viruses (can't get into it since it is rare for the account to be logged in and I update my scanner and do a sweep before I do my backup). The only weakness in this plan is that physical destruction of the location is, well, going to get both disks. Some key stuff is backed up onto CDs and stored off-site though. WWB

It is a Lucent Brand LTWin modem. The thing is, quite frankly, amazing. Note that I have never, ever been able to reproduce these results. WWB

This sounds a bit like menus at swanky restaraunts: This battle is best served cold, and accompanied by a medly of DD's trees and grass, Panzertruppen's buildings, and Surlyben's skies. WWB

Play Steckenroth Roadblock, avaliable at The Scenario Depot and find out. WWB

I have the world's most amazing modem, I regularly get 52k speeds and can download over all that bandwith. I have never seen a modem like it, and I have tried many. WWB

Puffy: The defender generally loses the bulk of 'no man's land', which is set by the designer. Current settings are 80m, 160m, 240m and 400m, IIRC. Steve: Thanks for the replies as always. I have some appreciation for how hard relatively simple tasks for the human brain, such as scanning text for meaning, are exceedingly complex to code successfully. So I keep it simple with the requests. I am glad you all are looking into putting in more reinforcement instances, and I hope you do not forget normal battles in the process. In general, giving scenario designers more options within the current system will pay off in spades. We designers are a creative bunch and the more settings, the craftier we become. One last, small request: Would it be possible to enable the keypad to select the terrain types in the left pane of the scenario design window. Having to click on the desired terrain type with the mouse leads to losing your place at worst and lots of wasted mousing at best. WWB

AAK! I had a nicely written piece on how to use operations in CMBO, but I managed to brush the back button and killed it. So, here is the short, short version: Thanks for passing my ideas on Steve. Schullenraft's addendum is a great one as well, being able to simulate several tactical situations would be real cool. I, for one, do not think Operations are horribly broken in CM, so long as you recognize the limits to the engine and work within them. There are three big things a designer can do to make the battle work better: 1) Keep it short. More breaks between battles means more chances for the start-line problems to effect your battle. Plus, the 5-instance reinforcement limit (hint, hint Steve) can lead to thinly spread forces by the end of an operation. 2) Keep the map narrow. One of the biggest problems is that an armored car will pass unnoticed around one flank, and end up pushing someone back the entire map. Which is a pretty unfun event. Keeping the map narrow helps eliminate too-long flanks. 3) Keep the 'flow' of the battle parallel to the map. If the battle you are working on flowed NW-SE, twist it so it goes E-W. Another trick I discovered is that lines of cover ever 200-300m perpindicular to the axis of advance help the engine out alot in laying out setup zones. WWB

One thing I am suprised I have not seen mentioned here is that, after testing the T34 against the Panzer III and IV, the Soviets themselves thought that the German tanks were far superior to the T34 in everything aside from gun and armor. This conclusion was reached after testing all three models side-by-side. Not that Gun/Armor are unimportant, but if the TC is too busy fiddling with the gunsight to notice the Panzer III stalking him from the rear, then he is in big trouble. Possibly bigger trouble than dueling with an enemy tank that he could not penetrate. WWB

I think it had something to do with a combination of all the factors. Politically, Stalin wanted to install a government of his choosing. Militarily, the Germans were exhausted but showing signs of life. And logistically, the spearheads were worn out and supply lines were overstretched. Any way you slice it, it made sense to order the halt on the Vistula. WWB

I think it had something to do with a combination of all the factors. Politically, Stalin wanted to install a government of his choosing. Militarily, the Germans were exhausted but showing signs of life. And logistically, the spearheads were worn out and supply lines were overstretched. Any way you slice it, it made sense to order the halt on the Vistula. WWB

Steve, One possible quick-fix I suggest is that instead of taking No Man's Land away from the defenders, take it away from the attackers. This would address alot of those "I held the line but the computer moved me back" issues, and probably would be more realistic. Attackers tended to pull back to safe positions, while defenders tended to hold on to their already dug-in haunts. The only other suggestion I have is to give scenario designers more NML settings. I stick with 0m now, because that is the only way for things to work well with the current engine. But it would be really cool to have 20, 40, 60 and 100m settings, as well as probably not too much work. WWB

Ouch. Whips hurt. Just for that the sequel of Too Little, Too Late will feature 3 stuarts and some greyhounds vs. Jagdtigers on an open map with ranges stretching out to 1500m. And, Wildman, how dare you call me good. Have not ye seen me latest landing exploit. I was not aiming for those barrels. And it is not my fault for having twitch shooting skills, I am of that generation after all. WWB

Thanks for the intro Ted. I am pleased and honored to be a part of a very fine team, and hope to help to bring many a sleepless night and cold sweat in the future. WWB

I don't think there should be 'national' modifiers WRT winter weather. Eric has a good point, it might well make sense to add a data field to the units for quailty of winter equipment. Also, this only really matters in the winter of 1941. In subsequent seasons, the Germans were much better pepared, to the point that German generals thing the best season for fighting was the winter, because there were fewer places for the Soviets to hide and movement actually got easier due to freezing of the ground. WWB

JC: I really cannot understand why you have not figured this out by now, but games of CM are not played in the kind of artificial lab environment you propose and seem addicted to. It does not matter if a single component works perfectly on its own, because in a real game there will be other components which might well effect how that component works. The interaction of advancing troops and incoming fire is not at all the simple equation which you precieve it is, but a huge series of complex interactions which you apparently cannot fathom. Basically, you are trying to make sure if the widget device works in the clean room, not on the street where it is to be used. Leave the lab tests to the academics. WWB

I guess I have been a bit harsh in this thread. CMMOS is a very good thing and I do appreciate all the efforts that went into it. I am in no way trying to detract from it. My main beeef is that those who choose not to use CMMOS for whatever reasons have been completely left behind by all the new mods. Not that my set is bad, but I could really use a new winter set (Goddamit Tom! Where is the Bulge Pak Man!) and a few minor improvements. But I have to dl ~150mb worth of stuff to get one hi-res stug at this point. Moreover, I think there is an advantage to webmasters WRT bandwith savings. Letting people download individual mods will probably mean several people do not download the entirety of CMMOS, saving several hundred MBs of bandwith quota right there. WWB

God, just call me a cave man and get over with it man. I don't use CMMOS for several reasons. Mainly I want to play with CM instead of fiddle with my mods. I like to hook up one set to look good, don't mess with option packs, and like black and white TVs too. That and I am on a 56k dialup so unless I want to risk downloading stuff at work, huge multi-terrain sets are not an option. It is more of a convenience issue really, why do I need some huge DL with everything in the world in it, have to go thru renaming files when it would be little trouble to put a seperate, smaller zip of each individual set up for us cavemen and crumudgens. WWB

For those of us non-CMMOS types, any chance of seeing a 'normal' version of the mods made avaliable. I have not added anything new because everything recent comes out as a CMMOS set, not a good old fashioned zip file. WWB

Correction JC: The 6th fought in Norway and Russia in 1944. WWB

Just ask Rune how many Panther Ds can get put on a map . . . And who volunteers to do Prokhova in its entirety? WWB

One point about simulating WWI-style MG positions: Try using wooden bunkers. Looking at pictures, it seems that they were much more akin to dugouts than foxholes. While the MG42 ROF is a bit high, the gunners will be about as safe as they were in the 'teens. WWB

That is not unheard of, but it is beyond the simulation capabilities of CMBO. The 128mm gun has enough reach to take out armored targets at 4km. But they are a bit hard to hit, unless the range is known precisely beforehand. While you can help out with a TRP, you cannot get the kind of pre-ranging the Germans were known to use from prepared positions in CMBO. WWB

Go to the www.whatismyip.com to get your outside IP. You probably have to setup NAT and port forwarding to get the ports going the right place. Also, remember that CMBO is kind touchy about its connection, and might not take well to spottiness of wireless LAN connections. WWB