Robert Mayer

I was in London last month and CM was on shelves there for 29 pounds.

Doctrine may have discouraged hiding behind tanks, but something tells me that in the heat of combat men tended to hunker down behind large steel objects between them and the guys shooting at them. It would seem this would be true of all sides in the conflict. Of course, do you want your game to simulate what should happen or what did happen, I guess that's the question.

Point taken, Major; by "mainstream," though I mean beyond just hard core wargamers. The sales figures in that realm are so low they don't even register with mainstream game companies. Of course that begs the question--if you're doing ok in a niche why compromise for a mainstream that probably won't do much for you anyway? I do think though, from my conversations with wargamers over the years, that adding in the featuers I mentioned would expand even the number of wargamers who would buy TacOps. I know of many who like the subject matter but won't buy a game where they can't play both sides.

Hmm, is it that horrible for people to expect a new version of TacOps--which is only available as a new purchase, mind you--to include (gasp!) new scenarios and other things? Granted, enhanced multiplayer capabilities are nice (for those who use them--I've had a copy of TacOps since its debut on the Mac back in 1994 or whenever and have played precisely two multiplayer games <g>), but that's the sort of thing most gamers expect in a patch, not a new product. The one thing that has hurt TacOps most in the "mainstream" wargaming world is the inability to play OPFOR in solo games. You can complain about graphics whore reviewers all you want, but until TacOps allows you to play both sides against a decent AI (rather than just one side against a decent AI as now) you will never see the game go beyond cult status. I mean, I still love the damn thing but not having the time for multiplayer matchups the lack of a blue force AI has always been the game's bete noir in my book. Still, any new version of TacOps is a cause for joy.

Erickson was one of the first Western scholars to gain access to the then-Soviet archives, and his massive two-volume work remains indispensable as a detailed recounting of combat operations in the Germany-USSR conflict. He's boring as hell though, and after a while your eyes glaze and all you see is a never-ending roll of XX Korps and 34th Army and XXXth Tank Brigade, ad nauseum. Still very useful, and well worth getting, especially if you can get a nice edition. Glantz is better written in some ways, though Clash of the Titans is more of an overivew--his battle-specific stuff is dry but often very good. He has a new-ish series that includes companion atlases; I know he has one for the 1941 battles around Smolensk. Neither Glantz nor Erickson is going to be mistaken for Stephen King (or even John Keegan) as an accessible writer, but they're great places to go for detailed info. For an overview, though, Clash of the Titans is much better than the Road books. Also Werth's book is decent as well.

Yeah, I'm sorry about the mistakes in the article. As Steve notes, there was some confusion, mostly on my end. Steve talks a lot, and in going through the tapes of the interview, "CM2" and "CMII" got me confused--we jumped around a lot. So everything Steve said about relative spotting is true, but only for the next game in the series. On the Winter War, well, that's my fault too, in that once he said the Finns were in I figured, hell, what else would they do but fight the Winter War? Again, sorry for the errors.

I think each soldier needs to be tracked by name and personal history. We should see messages like "Pvt. Green takes one in the leg, three inches below the knee! His movement speed is reduced to 1, and he'll have a limp for the next three weeks." Then, at the end of a battle, we should see a list of every single soldier, and what happened to them. Oh, and a list of their home towns, too!

Everyone would love to have CMBO magically updated to CMBB standards. But it's hardly a no-brainer issue of "customer support." BTS has no particular obligation to continuously improve the game you bought. It works, they fix problems where they arise, and you got what you paid for. Now, it's nice when a company does retrofit improvements to a game, but I wouldn't hold it against them if they put their efforts into a new title instead. The idea that it would make business sense to go back and redo CMBO after CMBB doesn't wash IMO. For such an effort to be successful, BTS would have to re-sell CMBO to pretty much everyone. Now, while some of the hardcore would gleefully pay another $50+ for the same game redone, I'm betting most gamers would choke on the idea of buying again what they already bought once. So I don't think that BTS would gain much from trying to sell a CMBO upgraded to CMBB standards. Now, if the West Front gets the CMII treatment, that'll be a whole new game, and there should be no problem selling it. The effort needed to refit CMBO IMO again isn't something that could be done on the cheap or that easily. And it's a zero-sum game--retrofit an existing game (for which efforts you'd receive nada, as I've explained above), or work on a new, salable product. Seems a no-brainer to me. In the world of computer games in general, rarely does a company try to keep their entire catalog of similar games up to date. You didn't see Doom upgraded to Quake standards, and when they did Falcon 4 they didn't give the "upgrades" for free to owners of the original Falcon, either. Sure, BTS only has one game really, but it's a whopper . Besides, just because CMBB will exist with different features in no way makes CMBO worse. What, you wake up one morning and suddenly the game you enjoyed last night is no good because another, different game is out that has more features? Sheesh--I'm glad I don't feel that way about cars, I'd be broke

Out of curiosity, are these legal? I'm not accusing anyone of anything, please understand, I'm just curious, because I've heard from BTS that they've been trying to get a hold of the remaining boxed copies of these games for sale, and have been unable to. That would lead me to believe that 1) they still own them, and 2) they still have interest in them, meaning 3) most likely someone offering them for download is doing something naughty. I'd like to hear BTS' opinion meself...

Hehe, thanks. The "confusing" icon was a mistake, one which I haven't bothered to edit out.... :eek:

I can understand the concern for CMBO, once CMBB is out, and I kinda share the feeling, but I can't for the life of me figure out how BTS can get around the problem. From what I've been told, and from what we've all seen, the changes in CM2 are going to be pretty significant. Some of them, like the "weapon racks" and the unit designations, require an 800 by 600 minimum interface. Others, like relative spotting, vehicle morale, and vehicle organization, have huge effects on gameplay. I can't see any way of retrofitting these to CMBO in a cost-effective manner. I suspect that to do so BTS would have to suspend work on CMII, and on CM3/4 as well. And all the improvements for the original game would in effect be uncompensated--they'd be revamping the game for no additional revenue, but with a lot of additional work. Then there are the issues of performance and hardware requirements. CMBO has a very low hardware threshold. CMBB has a somewhat higher threshold. To retrofit the one to the other would necessitate upgrades for some--perhaps man--CMBO owners. Sure, owners of the first came could choose not to upgrade, but then, they'd only be able to play with other unupgraded people, the flow of user created scenarios would dry up, and soon they'd be outcasts anyhow. Some companies are able to pass upgrades down the line--HPS comes to mind, for the Panzer Campaign series--but those games are much simpler in many ways and the improvements are incremental (and it's getting harder and taking longer to do these upgrades with each release, anyhow). I sure as hell can't and won't speak for BTS, but as much as I'd love to have CMBO upgraded, I'm not holding my breath, nor do I begrudge them the decision not to offer such retrofits, if that's the course they choose. We'll just have to wait for CMII to return to the West maybe, with an even better engine....

If, and again this is just speculation on my part, the game handles relative spotting like we've discussed here, I suspect that yes, radios will figure in prominently. BTS has said they will be paying special attention to radios or the lack thereof in the game, with radio-less units getting some significant C3I penalties.

First off, the quote with the Voodoo references is from CGW, not my CGM article, just to clear things up. In the CGM article, I write: "The game will drop support for 4MB video cardds, making 8MB cards the minimum requirement. 32MB cards are suggested, though the game will function well with 16MB boards." I.e., the only things that won't run this game in 3D mode (I presume; I didn't ask about software mode, for some reason ) are old cards like the Voodoo1 and the early ATI Rage boards. Anyone with a remotely modern 3D card should be ok, though if you want to use high-res textures and lots of mods, the more VRAM you have the better, obviously. :confused: [ 06-05-2001: Message edited by: Robert Mayer ]

Computer Games Magazine is available in Canada, but as in the US which precise stores will have it is something of a crap shoot. As for relative spotting, I suspect it'll be more along the lines of displaying everything just as is done now, but not allowing the tac AI to "see" things not directly observed by a unit. So, if you have an AT gun that is shooting at a tank, and the rest of that tank's platoon can't see the gun, then until (unless) the original tank lets them know where the AT gun is, or they move to where they can see it, the tac AI will handle those tanks as if that AT gun doesn't exist. Of course, if this is the case the player will be able to send tanks to the AT gun anyhow, but those tanks will not be wary, because they won't know the gun is there, so you might be sending them into an ambush. Just speculation on my part, however. In any event, I see Deanco's points, but on balance I think the "fun factor" will only be enhanced by this. Then again, I have a higher tolerance than most for excessive abstraction

I suspect that CMII will in all probability be an East Front/West Front package, thus giving both CM and CM2 a next gen upgrade. To retrofit CM2 code to CM would certainly be possible, but not cost-effective, if that effort could be put towards developing either CMII or CM3/4. Still, would be nice, wouldn't it? <g>

Heck, we run previews on games that are years away from release sometimes Given that CM2 should be out by Christmas, that's positively right around the corner in the magazine biz!

Steve was pretty adamant when he talked to me about this. "It changes everything," he says, and I guess I believe him :cool: How, exactly, it will work, well, he was a little bit more coy about--probably because they want to save some stuff for later, and possibly because they're still working out the details....

Wrong, jshandorf, Fair Use does not include scanning in copyrighted material and posting it publicly, simply to show it off. You could quote a small section of the article, certainly, but you are not allowed to take significant parts of a copyrighted work and repost them without the copyright owner's permission. The fact that people do it all the time doesn't change the legality of it. Fair Use applies mostly to reviews and academic usage, and even then the law has gotten much stricter over the past few years. But it's not a question of law, really--it's a question of fairness. One of the big draws of both articles on CM2, in both mags, is the pics. If you post some of them (and there aren't many to go around), that significantly diminishes the value of the article to a prospective purchaser. It also violates Fair Use as you've reprinted a very significant part of the article without permission. If anyone wants to see the shots they have two viable options--wait until BTS posts them, which won't be long really, or buy a magazine, and read the articles. You do want to read the articles, don't you? I'm frequently struck by the attitude on the web that everything should be free, and that any info on a topic of interest is by right and natural law the collective property of fans. Information, despite the cliche, has never been free, and good information always costs someone something.

Everyone is entitled to think what they will of game mags, of course, but I do take exception to the allegations that computer game magazines in general write their reviews to please advertisers. Not only is this untrue, and offensive to those of us who work in the business, it's simply untrue, and a little bit of research would reveal that. Looking at the three PC game mags in the US, you'll find that over the years there is no correlation between good reviews and advertisements. We've had companies that never advertised with us get all sorts of good reviews--and we've slammed the games of companies that bought big spreads. It's the same with other mags, too--the writers and editors have about zip to do with the ads. We just write about games. As for the quality of magazine reviews (keep in mind of course that reviews are only one part of a mag), that's going to be judgement call usually. If you are focused on a particular genre, like flight sims or wargames, and want very long, deep reviews covering every system and subsystem in the game, none of the PC mags are going to meet your expectations. We don't have the room, for one thing--space is money in print. Secondly, our audience is much broader than just wargamers or just flight sim fans (or sports game fans or whatever). We are quite logically going to give the biggest feature space to games we think will appeal to more readers--hence our recent huge D&D feature, and this month's "Tweaking Windows for Games" extravaganza. At most, a game review is going to get about two pages, which after pictures, layout, and sidebars is probably going to be maybe 1000-1200 words. We tend to think you can review any game well in that length, and we have occasionally upped the word count, but in general if you want 3000-5000 word reviews, you'll have to turn to the web where quality is much less consistent, but space constraints are practically non-existent. Of course, that presupposes you believe that a long review is inherently better than a short to medium-length review, which is a question that could be debated forever. I suspect that a lot of the hostility to the gaming magazines here arises from a couple of factors. One, while many Combat Mission fans (like myself) also play other computer games, there are a lot it seems that view anything other than wargames or turn-based strategy games with great suspicion, even disdain. Because mags as a matter of course cover those "other" games--RPGs, shooters, racing games, sports titles, etc.--far more than wargames, there's a built-in resentment thing happening. Two, most of the gaming press is actually focused on consoles, and some of those mags are indeed way out there, and give a rather bad impression to more mature readers. And on the question of reviewing historical veracity, it's not the expertise that's at issue, it's the focus of the review and the mag. No matter how knowledgeable the reviewer, we're not going to run a 4500 word dissetation on how this game or that doesn't model the penetration values of the 75L24 on the Pz. Kw. IV Ausf. D or whatever. It just ain't gonna happen, because 99% of our audience would be alienated. What you might want to consider--just a suggestion--is how cool it is that three big general-purpose computer game mags take the time and effort to make sure niche games like CM get exposure, and how we as a whole try to incorporate wargamers into the broader community of computer gaming. Sure, you should always rely on specialty (mostly web-based) publications for specific coverage, but it's nice to see mags with 400,000+ circs featuring Combat Mission or HPS' games prominently, isn't it? Robert Mayer Managing Editor Computer Games Magazine

Actually, we hate the polybags too--we'd rather you be able to flip through the mag and see what's in it, because we think you'd be more likely to buy the issue that way. But as long as the CD is in there, it's a non-starter--too many of them are stolen as it is, I'm afraid. For folks not in North America, take heart--you can increasingly find Computer Games Magazine at least overseas. We're even translated into Greek and Italian, and available locally, plus the English edition should be increasingly available wherever the Queen's tongue is spoken. I know it sometimes seems like a lot to spend $8 or whatever on a mag, but think of it this way: you wouldn't want people to steal Combat Mission would you? If you can find a library that has our mag, read it there if you like, just please don't post stuff online--we'd like to continue to cover great games like CM/CM2, but we gotta eat as well Robert Mayer Managing Editor Computer Games Magazine www.cgonline.com

Computer Games Magazine, July issue, has a preview as well, with screens too. Just to be fair . BTW, scanning and posting is a gross violation of copyrights. It would most likely get deleted by the sysops here, one step ahead of the calls from the lawyers. This is too high a profile site, and too high a profile game, for a mag to ignore copyright infringements. Yes, I work for Computer Games Mag .

Yeah, I've seen Stuarts take out concrete AT bunker too, with great regularity. That 37mm is a veritable sniper rifle <g>. Pillboxes were built to defend against, um, artillery fire, mostly. So it's not terribly surprising that artillery is crappy in taking them out

Interesting question. I don't think any of the major armies of the period envisioned the tank becoming the primary anti-tank platform. Tanks were, as noted, breakthrough and exploitation weapons, designed to move rapidly, and have considerable "shock" value against troops and rear echelon targets. Killing tanks was the job of tank destroyers, panzerjaegers, or however you'd call them--specialist units armed with tank-killing guns of various sorts. As the war progressed, it became inevitable that tanks would meet their opposite numbers. The same qualities that make a tank good for the attack make it great for the counterattack and active defense. And tanks were generally quite usefull in most aspects of warfare--infantry units liked to have tanks around to support them, as mobile MG and arty bunkers if nothing else. Tank armor tended to go up in response to the anti-tank weapons fielded against them, which in turn went up in power and size because of the effectiveness of tanks on the offensive. As tanks met other tanks in combat in increasing numbers, the need to penetrate that armor led to increased size and power in tank armament. That in turn led tanks to uparmor again, leading to upgunning, etc. This was true in all the armies, but some reacted more swiftly than others. The US, which got into the thick of things a bit later, and didn't pay that much attention to battlefield data from other sources, lagged behind, while the Germans and Russians, with the most extensive and immediate body of combat experience, reacted the fastest. The Germans started the war with fairly light tanks with fairly modest armament. It was Russia (and to a lesser extent things like the Matilda) that drove them to field higher powered guns, and the natural evolution of AT weapons that drove the increase in armor. The irony was that you didn't need a super high velocity tank cannon and umpteen inches of armor to be an effective *tank*, but rather you needed those things to best *survive* against other tanks. To the end, the Germans used lesser tanks (PzKw IVs, for instance) and especially assault guns in traditional tank roles, for breakthroughs, exploitations, and counterattacks. The AT job was also a big part of assault gun use. There simply weren't enough Panthers to go around, and Tigers were best suited for specific roles, being too heavy and unmaneuverable (and often unreliable) for regular use--and they were rather rare as well. In short, I can't really comment much on specific decisions taken by the Germans regarding armored force development, but in general they followed the course that other nations did, only to a greater degree. The Russians were quick to realize the need to upgrade tanks, but less effective in actually doing it, until the later stages of the war--though he T-34 series was quite serviceable, and quite numerous. The Americans--well, we didn't react terribly well or swiftly, though again we did make a lot of tanks. The German system ended up fielding a bazillion different models--it's possible to argue that the Germans reacted too fast to battlefield developments, maybe.

I would also like to see better modeling of obstacles and fortifications. I do, however, see some issues with them in quick battles. In "real life," does every defense involve mines and wire and roadblocks? I do not know, but I do think that given effective and inexpensive mines, wire, and obstacles, nearly every defender in a QB would buy them like crazy, making every QB attack an engineering fest, unless there was a gentleman's agreement, etc. Heck, even meeting engagements might be the same way, if one side planned to lay back and force the other to attack. Still, I think those issues could be worked through. They're not enough in my book to mitigate against improving the engineering aspects of the game.

Whether the base color thing is doable or not I think it's a good idea, certainly an addition I'd welcome. I love to organize my force and keep companies/platoons together. The argument about Fog of War doesn't move me I'm not one of those gamers who wants to simulate the experience of war--I just want the intellectual stimulation of figuring out how to win battle. Making it hard for me to see my own units--physically see and track them, as opposed to command and control--doesn't add anything to the game for me.