Robert Mayer

Perhaps, but it could (I emphasize "could," as I don't have anything to go on but a hunch) be a matter of economies gained by purchasing "package deals." A machine gun section purchased a la carte, as it were, might cost more than if you bought the whole company (the whole meal, to continue the analogy--it's dinner time!). Or not.

I just can't understand why you'd want to play with some one who: 1) Insists on playing only one side 2) Is at best extremely reluctant to play with maps and forces not of his choosing 3) Employs thoroughly gamey tactics Now, I admit, I'm not the best player in the world (ok, I probably suck ) but I do like playing more historical-type battles, with realistic force levels and types. Most of all, though, I love playing both sides, because of the interesting challenges. I can understand having a preference (German tanks look cooler, let's be honest!) but IMHO half the fun of CM is in seeing how well you'll do with what you're dealt. Nothing is as satisfying as pulling out a win when you're facing Panthers and all you have are bazookas and an M8....

As the editor of <A HREF="http://www.cdmag.com>Computer Games Online</A>, I have to agree that WebCrossing is not the way to go. We're not happy with it, though I'm sure it's a great program for other sites. It's too unwieldy and slow for us, and hard to organize without some heavy-duty attention. I realize our members aren't terribly happy with it either . Luckily, we're heading for a complete redesign of the site "real soon now," and along with that will be a new BBS. Oddly, we've been looking at UBB, but if it's collapsing here, we might have to look elsewhere. I think, though, that all forum software, well, just sucks.

"It IS a beta you know!" --Madmatt Amen . Working at a game magazine, a good chunk of the software I run at work is beta, or even alpha stuff. Much of it is as stable as home-made nitroglycerine, and buggier than a two-dollar motel in south Florida. Actually, the CM 1.1 beta is pretty good by our standards . I am looking forward to the final patch, though, that's for sure.

I'll put in a strong vote for including a "battlegroup" style quick battle option. I love the idea of quickly generating historically reasonable sides for a quick battle. It'd be quite nice to be able to, say, set up a battle between an attacking mechanized column and a blocking force of infantry with light support, or whatever.

Firefight was good in its day, but it's rather horribly dated now, at least in its weapon selection. It's from the era of T-62s and M-60s, with M113s and BMP-1s. It was an excellent theoretical tool though. On the PC or Mac you can get a copy of TacOps that also does a good job at the scale you're looking for. It's also a "laboratory" game given that it doesn't model too many "soft" factors like morale, but it's quite good, especially head to head. Other than that, the suggestions made above are about all you have to go with I think; board game sims of modern tactical combat haven't been that popular since the advent of PC games it seems. Used to be, in the era of SPI's heyday, you had games like Red Star/White Star, the two MechWar games, CityFight, etc. all the time....

Here at Computer Games Online and Computer Games Magazine, we use a mixture of GeForce/GeForce 2 and Voodoo 5500 cards. Most of us don't care which one is in our work machines, because, they're both good. My home machine is a GeForce 2, and I love playing CM on it, but I had no trouble playing CM on my work machine with the V5, either. My personal experience has been that I have less trouble with NVIDIA-powered cards than with 3dfx parts, but again your mileage may vary. I've always just gone with what Dell gives me in the computer I just bought, usually.

Amen on seeing the map before purchasing units. While it's true that a battalion comander would often be called upon to fight in locations not of his own choosing, the QBs aren't really historical, and would be better tests of player skill if they factored in terrain analysis too. It's frustrating to buy units that turn out to be less valuable because there are too many trees (or not enough), etc. <g>

WWII TD units did so well probably because, well, they were there. In many combat situations, there were simply more TDs to draw on than tanks, and it was more likely to find a battalion of M10s or M18s available for tapping than one of M4s, methinks. Certainly the crews of these open-topped under-armored vehicles deserve a lot of credit for perseverence and courage under fire; you can hardly read any accounts of battles the US was engaged in in Europe in WWII without coming across cases where TDs played crucial roles. Still, you can't help but wonder whether putting those resources (material and human) into real tanks might not have been more productive. We'll never know I guess.

...but with Windows ME, you don't get a DOS box, so how can you do batch files? Unless I'm missing something (entirely possible), with ME and all subsequent OS from Microsoft for the PC, DOS is pretty much a non-starter. What we need is a Windows batch language of some sort. Java, anyone? <g>

Well, the M8s I've used have done well enough, but generally don't have a long life expectancy. I've lost some to bogging, but usually it's a heavy MG or light cannon that takes them out. It's true the bigger tank guns can't slew fast enough to track, but the lighter guns on recon and support vehicles don't have that problem. And their armor is rather limited.... I rather think we gamers tend to use our light vehicles more aggressively than was historical, though I have no hard and fast data on this. Lacking the flexibility of real units (to be able to sneak and peak more effectively) and lacking the drive of self-preservation (send that Greyhound up against a PzKw IV? Sure, why not?), I suspect our tactics aren't 100% historical <g>.

21" is a tad large for my tastes, for all the reasons stated above (it's particularly irritating with fixed-resolution games--you haven't seen pixels until you have to play 640 by 480 games on a 21" tube...). I do love 19" monitors, though; I use Dell's trinitron 19" for my CM games and it's gorgeous. Much better than my previous 19" even (then again, I don't mind the trinitron horizontal lines, either). Gotta echo what everyone is saying though: get a good monitor. After all, every single thing you do with your computer will involve that screen....

I'd be satisfied to just separate out Operations from Battles, I think, though I'd also like separation by date, but I guess that'd be more important for CM 2 with its longer time frame.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Hans: What I think is needed, along with the Fast Move, Move and Hunt command is the Recce command.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I've often wanted this sort of thing myself, but I realize it's a matter of a fine line between giving the user too much control or not enough. If we let the AI handle all the actions of recce, then we turn over perhaps too much of the leadership of our forces to the tac AI. OTOH, we can only partially replcicate a reconaissance action using the current commands (movement, hunting, pause, etc.). I think some of this feeds into the discussion of whether the game should support standard operating procedures (SOP). Setting SOPs is pretty much one of the tasks of a commander, but gamers don't usually want too much control taken from their hands (and tac AIs are notorious for not being the best subordinates, though CM's is pretty darn good).