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I make them run from time to time. I don't want them to get too complacent and walk around saying "Take a look at that!". They should always feel death lies around the next corner. For if they knew what I know, it does. So, "Run, Ladies, Run!".

How very kind of you. Thank you.

So, I am playing some games with heavy artillery bombardments. The sound of the impact is proportional to how close the camera is. When the camera is close, it is deafening. I have tried WIN10's Equalize option, but it tends to make softer sounds louder and the loud sounds stay loud. I need a peak noise limiter: either sound card, software solution, or speaker solution. Are there any game cards with such a feature? I only have ASUS Realtek MOBO sound at the moment, but I thought this was a standard feature of game cards. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Reminds me of PE Panzer Elite. It isn't until you try one of these older tanks you appreciate the stabilized gun with a laser range finder on the M1A1.

I tried SABOW and it looked quite nice. More fun than Steel Beasts as it was GTOS, but with tanks you could crew. But then, I really have problem gunning, since I have tremors and twitches ... shooting games are hard for me. 3rd person like CM/GTOS/GTMF/SOW ... are much easier.

I must retract this statement. Whereas it is true that a CM question draws help from numerous generous and veteran players; I did post a technical issue on Steam and within 24 hours I did have two posts from the primary designer/developer of the game. I believe it is fair to say that BFC (for CMx2 games) has a far greater market than Graviteam. What do I base my conclusion on? Post counts. Russian is about double English for GTMF: 2,000:4,000 (adding Steam in isn't going to move the needle much). Now, if we say that GTMF is the current major offering and CMx2 is the current offering, you see that BFC post counts come closer to 400,000. It may not be that BFC's market is 100X larger, but clearly it dwarfs Graviteam's. Well, I do hope that Graviteam improves the quality of its documentation which is more of an issue than the UI, and they find greater success. I think the long life of BTS/BFC and multitude of other tactical/operational titles means there is room and profit for both companies in this space. Good luck, Gentlemen! PS: I want to see our hobby of war gaming flourish. I want to see that the true history of the conflicts modeled by these companies should not be forgotten. Lest we forget who we are and how we got here today.

I just read the GTMF and GTOS manuals. They are different manuals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They obviously should be far more similar than different. I would say both are worth reading as they cover different, but related stuff. All I can say, it was probably fortunate for the USSR that the T-34 was more intuitive for a farm boy to operate than these games are to manage!!! SIDE NOTE: IQ test scores have been climbing for the last hundred years. Are folks getting smarter? No. IQ test often focus heavily on abstract reasoning. We are living in a far more abstract society than existed 100-200 years ago. We are just getting better at IQ tests.

I am still on the fence. Have a CM question on smoke, QB, arty ... Get an answer(s) in 24 hours. Have a GTOS/GTMF question ... you best soldier on and not ask dumb questions.

German voice files? Ah, you would have loved GTOS. There was constantly a voice crying before even a single shot was fired: Wir werden alles sterben. If it had been an FPS, I would have turned around and put a bullet in his head and fulfilled his prophecy. Now, the Germans wherever they go, there is always someone saying, I think "Walter?". I think ... did Walter go missing last night? Is the point of the Barbarossa simply to find Walter and deliver him to his mom and apple strudel? Is this this the Russian version of "Saving Private Walter?". At least, I cannot understand Russian. But I would happily send Graviteam, the guy from CM who keeps saying "Take a look at that!". Obviously, his first time off the family farm.

I think that is accurate. I have no desire to ever see war personally. I have no desire to command ... management of tech organizations was enough for me. For me, CM is an intellectual exercise in the way chess has been for 500 years in its current form. I greatly prefer CM to countless fantasy and sci-fi games. It is not that those games are not well programmed or well designed. But how can I reason about a game that models/portrays what does not exist? CM by definition is a very well modeled closed system, because what it models, in fact, occurs. There is recorded history/data. There is a base of human knowledge and martial discipline which is quite extensive; especially about past wars ... the future is anyone's guess. So, CM offers fun, graphics, goals, achievements, and a complete mental work out. I hope on my final day if it should occur before the faint glow of a display that when they find me, the text at top reads TOTAL VICTORY.

So, do you plan your drive not to crest any hills and skylight the car? Yes, I have played Steel Beasts too ... maybe 10 years ago or so. I have been playing ancient combat for the last couple of years now. It's very linear, but the approach is so entirely different. If you want to control terrain, then you must stand on it. Here, you must be able to converge fires upon it.

Well, this was one of the reasons Microsoft introduced QBE (Query by Example) for the Access product. It wasn't as representative as SQL, but it was graphical. I heard Dr. E.F. Codd speak one day, the father of relational DB and SQL. To think, IBM had it all under their roof long before Oracle and SyBase, but they actually suppressed his work for years before starting late on DB2. REASON: IBM had their own hierarchical DB, IMS. It was a nice revenue stream ... so rather than being the future, they played catch up. I ended up running the DB evaluation project/deployment for a large financial firm ... S&P. I selected Oracle despite that it was highly inefficient and most of Wall St. was buying SyBase. But it was clear that Oracle had the right approach ... run on everything. DB transactions were going to just be a commodity you bought and not hardware vendor you were married too. Can you believe I actually bought CMBO in 2000? It was like banging my head against the wall. I had no concept of terrain, lanes of fire, combined arms ... After air combat, ground combat was a whole new ball game. My wife was watching a TV series the other night. I said "terrible ambush". She said "No, it is a Japanese column and those are Chinese fighting for their country." I said, "They only hit the front and not the back forcing them to be boxed in. And they are positioned against the Sun. Their muzzle flashes are easier to spot." She said, "Well, they don't have good weapons ..." I said, "if they win this fight, then maybe they could pick up a couple of Japanese MGs, ammo, and grenades". CMBO was my introduction to the Art of War. About this thread ... I realized I asked the wrong question. Is there enough content? My days of CMx2 will more be determined my movie viewing than scenario count. Just a single battle can easily require 3-7 movie views per turn. If you think you will win by looking at the icons from 800M up, you are going to get your butt handed to you.

I thank you for your time and assistance.

Surprise in CMBN I saw it while the fight was underway. Maybe they added it in v4. It was an off map M1A1 75mm. I call for fire the very first turn it arrived onto a TRP (area fire).

Thanks. What is the difference between GENERAL and PERSONNEL? Is the later an air burst?

Never mind. I got it. The lines are drawn as I set up the target. So, I know.

IanL, You know you can see the impact of Moore's Law everyplace in our society. But what is little spoken of, but is equally significant is productivity. COGNOS was a productivity company. Putting more development power in the hands of your everyday programmer to deliver applications. Back in the 1970s with COBOL, the creation of a basic report could take a programmer months of work. When I retired, such a report could be done with any number of tools like Excel or Access in a few minutes. In fact, in many cases, an end user could do it without a CS degree. The revolution in productivity is simply amazing and rivals the industrial revolution.

When I select a fire mission, how can I know which unit I am selecting to perform a mission? They all have the same description, and I will not get the lines connecting spotter, command, and unit until after I have confirmed the mission. I think at that point I can cancel it, but it is not like canceling direct small arms/heavy weapons fire. Because everyone does not reset, but is now busy. I think there are valid reasons to want to know who is going to service your fire mission. How many rounds do they still have? Are they likely to be at the forward edge of battle soon ... then, I want their rounds down range before I lose their impact on the fight. So, how can I know which market reflects which unit? Thanks.

Thank you, MOS!

At the end of 120 seconds, I finally saw someone toss something and smoke. I guess I am impatient. Is there are limit on smoke? I see they have 20 grenades, but nothing is mentioned for smoke. One shot and then the smoke button goes dead? Thanks.

These guys were given a pop smoke order last turn (WEGO). Nothing happened during the turn (I mean smoke wise). What am I missing? Do I misunderstand the mechanics? Thanks. PS: Currently working through the various tutorials.

I had bought GTMF on release during my last days of GTOS although no expert. I fired it up last night and took it for a basic spin. I can say it was obvious that much work has gone into the UI since GTOS. It was far more intuitive, cleaned up, better structured, and clearly an effort had been made for English speakers. With that said, it is improved, but by no means obvious and anyone Russian or not is going to have to invest in a major learning curve. I guess there is a big market in Russia for the Great Patriotic War. I was a member of a French company, AGEOD, the only non-French member (FYI I was born NYC/USA 3rd generation). Our first 2 games were the American revolution and American civil war. Despite being French, it was clear to us that the market for PC games was in the USA. Thus, our target. I don't know about the current generation today. In fact, a whole generation has grown up since the WTC came down (my generation's Pearl Harbor). But for most Americans WWII is the USA. It is only here on the BFC forums, you will find people aware that the ball game was really won or lost in The East ... US deaths were a drop in the bucket compared to the USSR. But if you want to make money off WWII, you are going to do the USA in the West. It is pity that so few know any history. I have spent the last three years on 500 BCE - 500 CE (not just games, but maybe 12 classes). (It seems writing BC/AD would date me.) Rome is long gone, but casts a shadow maybe far greater than WWII ... construction (arch, concrete), legal system, government (republics), languages (root words from Latin), spread of Christianity, ...

Landser, You mention Jane's. Boy, did learning to fly a helo give me trouble. I miss teaching/flying my Spit9 more than any other. G_d, teaching people how do slow motion scissors and barrel rolls on the very edge of the envelope. 75% of the community were air show fighters ... quick aerobatic tricks. Why? It is was easy to catch the less talented. I taught energy fighting. I would gain on you in every maneuver by a fractional amount ... eventually when I had enough in the bank, I would cash in for coming around and with angles to achieve lead pursuit and fill your little plane with lead. It was a great time to enjoy a hobby that I could have only dreamed of as a kid.

IanL, No, COGNOS was not involved in any racket. It was one of my professors/internship/1st CS job. But COGNOS was one three offers I had in my first search (2nd resume job). I think I would have been working building applications with their generator for clients. They were $1,000 USD beyond the others, but even then, it was not a lot of money. I didn't so much chose Wall St. (of course, it would be 2/3s of my career), but I choose the interviewer/job. My interviewer and later manager was one of the sharpest system designers who I had ever met. I wanted to get to work with him. I learned that interviews are not just to screen applicants, but to sell the company/position. I didn't want to work in applications, but be a systems programmer/researcher working for DEC, IBM, Data General, Stratos, Sperry ... So, how did I end up on Wall S?. In every tech cycle, the start of the loop begins with custom systems software. The use of super-minis on Wall St. was experiencing that. So, I did a lot of work in assembly, F77, and C working on building proprietary DB, queuing systems, logging/recovery, screen generators, communication links ... (Marriage forced me out of academia, but it was an amazing job for Wall St.) It was a time when HW was expensive and people were cheap, and brokerage companies had the cash to reinvent the wheel every few years if it gave them a competitive edge.

I had for many years been a participant of Panther Games (one of the best AIs). MIUS/GTOS remind me of Panther. You craft the fight in broad strokes and let the mechanics do its thing. That is not to say that proper sighting of some ATGs can be critical. I think it is easier to pickup MIUS/GTOS from CMx1/CMx2 than the other way around. Why? I think CM teaches terrain, weapons systems, and combined arms to allow you to step up a level or two. I definitely understood PGs RDOA/HTTR/COTA/BFTB/CMDOPS better having played CM. --- Mord, Thanks for that thread. It was a good read.