ropey

Here's a quote from Overlord -Day and the Battle for Normandy, 1944, Max Hastings, p234 "...when suddenly a horrible eruption of molten metal came in through the side immediately behind the ammunition. This was like an acetylene cutter in action. Fortunately I was able to bale out faster than the first time." Another foot or so and the ammo would have been hit, and Trooper Brown would not have been talking about his luck... ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

Here's an account from 'real life'. (NZ 24 Bn Official War History.) "Manning a PIAT gun he [Pvt Allan Swann]fired four shots at the tank [a PzIV 'special - ie, long 75mm] at a few yards' range, damaging it to an extent that sent it backing away out of sight." The same incident from a news report: "Standing at the door, he saw a Mark IV coming in for a shot into the interior. with the tank at 10 yards, its gun slowly depressing for the shot which may have finished off the New Zealanders, he fired his PIAT from the hip [!]. The PIAT shell, fired almost between the tracks [ie, straight in front] hit at the junction of the turret and the body, jamming the gun. The Aucklander planted three more shots where they would do the most good. They did not penetrate, but the tank, obviously crippled, limped back out of range." My point here is that PIATs in the game seem to be rather more effective than this one, even at 10 yards range! On the other hand, Frost's battalion at the bridge managed to hold off armour quite well, and weren't they only armed with PIATs and grenades? ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

Jeff, I don't suppose any of the phots cover the La Friere causeway over the Merderet W of St Mere Eglise? I'm working on a scenario covering that. ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I recommend the following site www.geocities.com/MotorCity/8418/index.htm#cw It may answer SOME of these questions. ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I thought it might have been Le Lorey as well, but the forces mentioned don't match. ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

www.ualberta.ca/~dreinbol/fritz_anec2.html ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

We're still sulking because BTS won't include it in CM3. Actually our greatest design was for a stealth bomber based on the toilet paper principle: The strongest part of toilet paper is the perforation. Therefore we designed our bomber to be almost all perforation, thus being near invincible AND pretty hard to see. Testing looked extremely promising until the prototype was inadvertantly left out in the rain... ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I did a quick search but didn't find this particular info. My apologies for what is probably old ground... My arty FO shows a 33 sec delay, but these tick off at half the stated rate. Ie, a 33 second delay translated to 66 seconds before rounds fell. Is that normal? ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I thought that would be useful too. Instead of tracking an exact LOS, you would see a ragged disk, shading as the LOS line does. ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I'm there, and looking for an opponent...

I'd go along with 'simsjl'. Let the community do the work of adding units bring on the Kiwis!), while BTS concentrate on the core stuff. I guess one problem is that it might reduce a tank (for example) to a generic box with different skins, whereas they currently seem to be modelled with more detail than that. ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I have a scenario that requires playtesting - The NZ Maori Battalion attack on the Railway Station at Cassino. Anyone like to help me out? ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I seem to remember the Otago University Student's Society being quoted NZ$3000 (about US 2c these days ) for a T55 in working condition a few years back. Great for storming the registry after your student fees are increased yet again...

I am assuming mod-makers are restricted to editing the bmps to create their mods. am I right in thinking none of that affects the modelling? Is this true of the MDMP packs as well? ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

Stilll on the topic of rubble... (what is it with this guy?) I think that the current rubble tiles are reasonable for representing damage to smaller buildings, but the large buildings should be revisited. Take the Aachen scenario. Here your M7 takes out the large building down the street, and instantly has an unblocked LOS to the further (objective) building, and not a brick on the roads adjacent. I think a large buiding collapsing should leave the equivalent of a small one for LOS and defensive purposes AND spread rubble to all adjacent clear tiles. ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

Yep, rubble exists, but it's ugly! My beautiful map of Cassino would be all brown squares... ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I've got two being playtested. I've emailed them to PeterNZer directly. Anyone else want to playtest? One is huge, the other medium/small. ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

I wonder if the number of scenarios being submitted has surprised the developers? It really shows they're on to a winner when so many people get involved enough to create their own. Some thoughts on the editor for future releases? There are some obvious tiles missing, which have been discussed elsewhere - railway bridge, etc. I believe the combinations of road/terrain and river/terrain also need to be expanded to include all the possible combinations. (eg, Road in brush, river in trees.) I would also like to see a 'castle wall' tileset to represent not only the odd castle that shows up in Italy and Europe, but also old city walls, prisons, etc. A feature I would really like to see is the ability to add pre-existing battle damage to a map. (Like 'weathering' a model.) Perhaps you could choose levels of damage and have the AI apply it to the map. For example, I have created a map for the Cassino battles but it is full of pristine buildings - how do I appply battle damage easily? There are no crater tiles, and filling it with rubble tiles would be ugly. This could be accomplished manually with the addition of damage tiles such as blown bridges, craters, shredded trees, etc. Another possibility: provide terrain reference points and have some way of generating the contours in between. Cassino mapping is a laborious process of trying to determine contours. Finally, a small one... IMHO, the rubble tile is ugly. Anyone have the artistry to improve it? ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.

Will reducing resolution help smooth jumpy game play? If so, how can I do it? ------------------ Never leave your mind so open your brains fall out.