Andrew H.

While some in the US did note that the use of flashless/smokeless powder by German (and Japanese!) forces did give them some advantages, these reports deal only with rifles and machine guns. I'm unaware of any reports complaining about the use of these propellants in tanks (and I'm not sure that tanks used the same formulation anyway). But you can certainly find video of WWII German tanks and PaKs firing, and they are neither smokeless nor flashless.

Yes, yes we do! When that one guy is Charles...

This is where you usually announce that you're going out of town for a week! :-*)

Interesting about the Tunguska vs. Abrams. In the small number of battles I've played, I've had two Abrams lose main guns to close range (˜300m) 30 mm fire. And I've had a lot of other equipment stripped off...so much so that I think that getting in close with 30mms isn't a bad solution for dealing with Abrams. If you can get close.

This reminds me of those SL scenarios that always ended up being decided by the outcome of hand to hand combat in the VL on the last turn!

I've had some luck with that scenario (although not the first time I played it!). I like splitting off a two man scout team from my squad and generally pushing down the left side of the map. Put your FO in a good location on the hill in the woods with LOS. Take the two man scouts to the fence at the bottom of the field in front of the woods. Then send your MGs, one at a time, across the field to the fence. Then send your leader. Keep the FO up top. Carefully push through the woods to the far end. Then sweep right and try to take the VLs from the rear...and continue on and exit. You'll likely be shot at while in the field, but there's some decent concealment to be had from the hedges, and you should be able to ID and knock out whoever is shooting at you with a couple of mortar rounds. But, yeah, you can't really relax until the GL is dead...

In general, I think that's a good rule - if you're the Javelin guy for your unit, your superior may not appreciate it when you return and explain that you gave away all of your ammo to some guy in another company. Although being in the same house with other unit when there are a bunch of AFVs outside is kind of different.

The laser beam in a rangefinder is larger than you think; at 1000 yds it's typically 4 yds high by 2 yds wide. (Unless there are more modern ones of which i'm unaware...)

I was hoping for a meatier Christmas Bone, however.

"That's what happens when you find a stranger in the alps!"

CMRT is *vastly* more detailed and has far, far fewer abstractions than Tobruk (a game I also like) or *any* board game.

While you're right about the M-4 being a descendant of the M-16 of course, I would suggest that the change transition from the M-16 *rifle* to the M-4 *carbine* was a pretty substantial change, despite their similarities.

I am switching to a mac and am in the process of rebuying everything (except for CMSF). But with bundles and download only, it's only about $275. Not counting Black Sea, which I haven't ordered yet. On topic: I'd like a France 1940 vehicle pack. And maybe some scenarios. And some maps. And maybe special Maginot line/ Eben Emael fortification rules. And of course French and BEF troops. And Dutch and Danish troops, too.

If you can pick your own troops, getting a lot of 3-man scout teams can help even the odds or at least reduce casualties. They typically come with either 3 smgs or 2 smgs and 1 mp44.

I've had this happen in game and it's a *huge* difference: while even close range rifle fire will penetrate a HT if close enough, I had hundreds of SMG rounds bounce of my HTs with no damage. It helped that I was on a rise above the SMG troops so there were no ricochets into the HT. I think the best solution in that kind of situation is just to area fire ahead of you into the woods with the LMGs. They *will* penetrate farther than you can see; but it takes a certain amount of willpower to keep firing blindly. A certain amount of luck helps, too. But when the alternative is losing 75% of a squad, almost anything is preferable.

It's even worse than that: if Steam takes 30%, they'd need to make sell 1.5x more to just break even...and much much more than that if Steam discounted the game. I.e., $50 (cost of game) x N (number of sales) = revenue. So 50(n)= revenue. If Steam is taking 1/3 off the top, you're left with 33.5(n) = revenue. N needs to be 1.5 to give you the 50(n) revenue that they are getting now. [33.5*1.5]= 50.25. But if Steam cut the cost down to $30, that's $20 after their cut, meaning you need to increase sales by 2.5X to get even. If Steam dropped the price to $20, sales would need to increase by 3.75X.

RT MG FI BN SF doesn't seem to be in the same universe; at this point it's more like CMx1.5

Yeah, the great thing about the SL/ASL scenarios was the *balance*. They weren't necessarily historically accurate, and of course the game itself is far less realistic than CM. But they had great scenarios and must have playtested them to death, since they were usually very tight. I must have played dozens of games that were decided during the close combat phase in the last victory location on the last turn of the game...and I still remember some die rolls from 25-30 years ago.

I had heard rumors of Computer ASL, but then lost track of it. Then, in the fall of 2000, there was a review of CMBO in the NY Times (of all places). So I downloaded the demo and then the game.

I think that this is a really key point. If a tank can pivot very quickly, but have a 10% chance of immobilization, things get complicated quickly. Does the player need a particular way to indicate that a turn should be executed "pivot-style"? Clearly the TacAI would need to do the same, maybe doing a pivot turn when the enemy was near, and a slow turn when it was just moving. But this would lead to all kinds of complaints/unrealistic effects - "My Panther got immobilized doing a quick pivot to face a HT!" "Why didn't my Panther quick pivot to shoot up the infantry doing the close assault?" When the game gets SOPs, this might be easier to deal with.

This is where the specificity of the "decal" model runs into the abstraction of the damage model. Specifically, if you look at the picture of the engine, maybe only 10% of the space is taken up by the engine (mostly near the top, but also near the rear) of the engine compartment. So let's say that there is a 5% chance that a large caliber shell goes clean through the engine compartment without immobilizing the vehicle. BFC sees engine hit, rolls the dice, and gets a "no damage" result. This is fine, completely realistic, and as it should be. The problem is that the decals show a specific entry and exit point, while the abstraction just relies on the general chances of damage/no damage. So even a statistically correct result will look wrong if the decal shows a hit in a location where there would clearly be damage. (And of course the result would look correct if the decals showed a hit near the very top of the engine compartment, which is probably what the statistical model reflects). So I don't think that this result shows a bug. It's just a case where there are still some abstractions, and certain graphical representations can't be taken literally. AFAICT, the decal is accurate for showing precisely which part of the armor was penetrated, and is accurate for showing which compartment of the tank was hit, but it does not accurately model the placement of equipment inside the tank; that is abstracted out to the level of the compartment.

I think the animation is correct, but the devs forgot to include the bottle of vodka that the men are supposed to be holding in that hand.

That's my experience, too.

That's a thread stopper...