BloodyBucket

Agreed. Reasons it wasn't a go might include: </font> Lack of German transport </font>The Royal Navy </font>The RAF </font>Hitler didn't have his heart set on it, hoped for negotiated peace </font>Large scale sustained amphib ops not easy to begin with, combined with any or all of the above </font>Since, IIRC, naval transport is not a seperate, buyable unit in SC, how can the other factors in SC make it a dicey, but not impossible, task against an allied player who does not aim the majority of his resources at "invasion proofing" jolly old England? If the allied player wants to gamble and put his eggs in other baskets, he might deserve what he gets if Sealion works. [ April 27, 2002, 05:44 PM: Message edited by: BloodyBucket ]

Hey Hubert, (and SuperTed and the rest)... The responsiveness to the Forum on SC is awesome. Bodes well for the game. Thanks.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but here are the basic German options I remember from 3rd Reich and World in Flames: </font> Invade England </font>Invade Russia </font>Invade Spain (Get Gibraltar) </font>Grab what you can and fortify, no invasion of England or Russia </font>The sub-options include Russia through Turkey, Isolate England (U-boat and Air), Spain becomes Axis minor, North Africa-Persia (Most attractive with a Japanese player in WiF). I am guessing that most will be possible in SC, with the exception of the Japanese link-up via Persia-India. Any thoughts on how these options will play out in SC, and are there any more out there?

And, will whatever sound that is in there be moddable? We want the "Kelly's Heroes" theme when the US attacks.

Old style Nato symbols would be good. There was an old SPI game, "World War One", that used headgear icons for the infantry units. Looked pretty good. Small portraits for the leaders, perhaps. It will be very interesting to see what comes out in the way of mods.

That's more like it! Screens look great, it almost broke my heart when I pushed the "OK" button on the options menu and nothing happened. Thanks, SuperTed. The appetite is certainly whetted, BTS is supplying bones aplenty today.

Now, that's not fair! :confused:

Will there be a cheese eating surrender monkey rule? Real Question: In a PBEM, will the player have the option to surrender? A little more graceful if done in game, rather than with the "You are beating the pants off me and I just can't take it anymore" E-mail, not that I have ever sent it or anything.

Yep, they threw in with the Germans. Looking forward to the demo. I know I'm getting interested when the reading starts. Old S&T magazines, browsing around for what-if books on the European theater... life is good!

Striking the balance between deadly dull detail work and bland oversimplification is certainly the trick. I think that a game designer will never satisfy all gamers with one title, but there are certainly things that a good game about WWII in Europe that should have. One element is decision making, via production and employment of units that gives historically valid and interesting choices. Being able to buy airborne units MIGHT contribute to this. Another element is flavor, or what the old board gaming community called "chrome". Having separate airborne units with nifty parachute icons is certainly "chrome", but if they do ahistorical, unrealistic things or unbalance a game, that is the kiss of death. Some "chrome" is harmless (SS units are black instead of gray), but too much can be, well, too much, especially if it makes the player micromanage every aspect of the employment and production of forces. Who would want to have to manage production of winter clothing for the German army? I know, some gamers would love to, but for most of us, having a penalty for German units during the first Russian winter works quite well. Sure, the Germans might have spared some production points for more winter gear and training. Hindsight, of course, is perfect. The "first winter penalty" rule is a compromise giving historical flavor promotes historical results and has been used in a lot of games. (Hey, how does SC handle that, by the way?) If SC has interesting decision-making, enough flavor to give it a historical feel and an AI and scenario editor to keep it fresh, it will make a lot of gamers happy. I predict that the airborne will be to SC what the quad .50 is to CMBO, a detail that would have been nice to have, but not enough to keep me away from the game.

I'm starting to get the impression that this game might be more than the sum of the parts. If every detail that every grog wanted was in there, we might be able to have the airborne invasion of Malta, defended by lend-lease purchased armor captured by Axis minors and shipped via submarine in parts by a randomly rated naval leader and put back together by Japanese engineers, who are available because of events in the "other" theater, but would we have a playable, fun game?

Thanks, I'll have to wait for the new drivers, and see if that helps. A new system to replace the old 350Mhz clunker is in the future, and you can be sure it will have an Nvidia based card, just so it can run CMBO and CMBB correctly. Also, I will take the time to inform VR, and Hercules, that CM is my primary motivator in getting an Nvidia based chipset.

Well, I am open minded enough to see how this works in the demo, but it makes my old SPI, get three-to-one odds, attack, surround and destroy head hurt! I'm sure the system will work out just fine, but when I see hexagons, I think in board wargame terms.

I just recieved a prophet 4000XT 32MB PCI card as a warranty replacement for a Nvidia TNT based card that went Tango Uniform on me. I have not had any of the corrupted text problems, and a search revealed that I am not alone in having problems with the transparency intersection, explosion airbursts and interior walls are gray problems. I saw a list of registry changes listed, but before I go messing with that, is that a fix for the text problems (that I don't have) or the other issues? Enabling the External depth Stencil/buffer option solves the transparency bug, but the game acts verrrryyy slowwww after using that option. Will these registry changes solve that? Since CM is about the only game I play, if the Kyro problem is unfixable, I might try to get different card out of Guillemot/Hercules. By the way, Hercules has been offline for a couple days now, so the drivers I got were from VR. (14.28)

So, let me understand this. If I have four units, each ten strength, surrounding a ten strength unit, assuming the defending unit "lucks out" and takes no losses during this sequence of events, I get four one-to-one attacks, instead of one four-to-one attack?

I also want to voice my support for this option. Letting the AI, as an option, control your allies would be great, and true multiplayer options would be great. These are the sort of things that seperate a classic that lives on your system forever from a played-it-beat-it-forgot-it game.

Thanks for the tip on the book. I confess to being much more familiar with American tactics and weapons, partly because of my location, and also because of my father's service in Europe during WWII with the 28th ID. He was, at least for part of his time there, a BAR gunner. He liked the weapon, but was well aware that it drew fire and the Germans were using something better. He told me that they sometimes employed the BAR for making long shots at individuals who got careless and assumed they were out of range, and also that he loaded the magazines all AP or every other round AP and tracer, mostly for pointing out targets to supporting armored vehicles. My father echoes the common claim that the BAR was well made, accurate and very reliable if maintained properly. He also remembers that they were not allowed to go to the rear with wounded men, and they were always seeking to "upgun" the TE.

First, thanks for doing this game. Great scale and subject, and it's about time somebody improved on the older strategic level titles. Will there be an option to view replays of turns, or better yet, entire games? If so, will the player be allowed to stop the replay and commence live play at any given point? As you are no doubt aware, graphic and sound mods for CMBO abound, and are one of the ways that game stays fresh. Will gamers be able to mod the graphics and sounds in SC? Keeping the data hard coded is probably the way to go, but it would be great to see what users come up with in the way of unit graphics, interfaces and sounds. I am spreading the word on SC, and hope the title takes off like a V-2.

Well, this is going to make me look silly, but I had no idea the Bren had a removable barrel. That does "change" my view of things (Pun intended). I still think that the MG-34 would be the ticket to base a squad around, given the choice of the three (Bren, BAR and MG-34). The Johnson seems to have suffered a similar fate to the Stoner weapons, that is, they were a good idea that didn't have the support or the political clout to get fully developed or adopted by other than a few specialty units. The technical shortcomings could probably have been ironed out with sufficient backing and interest. I don't think the Garand made up for the lack of firepower in American squads, although it is a good rifle, probably the best general issue rifle of the war. The key weapon available to the US platoon commander in WWII was probably the FO. The glacial nature of change in US doctrine is probably due to the fact that until recently, the idea has always been that outside fire support would be available whenever needed. Now that the idea of light infantry that can be inserted and extracted quickly is in favor, the need for a good SAW has been filled. This might be in part a response by senior leadership to their days as junior officers in Vietnam, where lavish fire support was not the the war winner it was in WWII. Can anyone reccomend a good book on Commonwealth infantry tactics in WWII? I would like to learn more about this.

American practice in adopting small arms has left much to be desired, to be sure. "Bullets and Bureaucrats, the machine gun and the United States Army, 1861-1916" by David Armstrong talks about the problems the army had with figuring out just what the heck they wanted to do with machine guns to begin with, and IIRC, the decision to pass the Lewis gun by had something to do with animosity between Lewis and a member of the ordnance board that began with the two men romancing the same woman. IMHO, the BAR and the Bren are so similar as to be the same thing. The MG34 beats them both by a mile, and the allies almost forced the Germans to think the MG-34 up by forbiding heavy machine guns in Germany post WWI. Another example of the law of unintended consequences. As recently as the 1980's the US was using fireteams that had an M-16 as the SAW, and the belt fed guns were a platoon or company, not a squad, asset. The idea of basing the squad around a belt fed machine gun, proven so effective by the Germans, has been slow to gain favor in the US. If I had to guess why, I would say that excellent outside fire support, a tradition of teaching aimed fire and plain old inertia from on high are the main reasons. As to the Johnson family of weapons, I think the main hit against them was reliability. Johnson was a former Marine, and got the Marine Corps to look at them, but the Garand and the BAR were too firmly entrenched for any advantage the Johnson guns offered to oust them. The Americans never suffered badly (on a operational level) from the lack of a squad level LMG during WWII because of outside firepower, but during the Korean war, they got trounced a few times when support wasn't available and they found they didn't have the organic infantry firepower needed to stop the North Koreans and Chinese infantry. It is my impression that the Brits were more aware of the importance of the Bren as the "center" of the squad than the GIs were with the BAR. I freely admit that my knowledge of Brit infantry tactics, training and usage are limited. I am guessing that the Brits used the Bren to better effect than the Americans used the BAR, mainly because of doctrine and training, and had the weapons been reversed, the results would be the same. Any more informed opinions on this?

How about the effects of body armor on the defense?

Sorry if I was unclear. I meant that the Americans were on the winning side, and thus, were more apt to be satisfied with the status quo in equiptment. I don't think that the US intervention in WWI was the sole factor in allied victory, nor do I maintain that the BAR was the key weapon in obtaining that result. Everyone, of course, knows that honor must be shared jointly by the M1911, the M1917 trench knife and the Pederson device.

While I can't remember the barrel length of the BAR, I bet it was close to the 24" barrel of the Garand, and both weapons used the same cartridge, as has been pointed out. The often cited penetrating power of the BAR was no more or less than the Garand, or, for that matter, the M1917 or M1919 type MGs, since all of them fire basically the same cartridge out of a similar length barrel. Purists will point out that the M1 cartridge adopted in 1925 used a 173 grain boat-tail bullet at 2,700 fps, and the M2 load adopted in 1939 had a 152 grain bullet moving out at 2,805 fps. But the prevailing WWII round, the M2, was used in the BAR, M-1 rifle and the MG at the same time. The reputation of the BAR might be due to the way automatic fire looks and sounds more impressive, the fact that it WAS more powerful than the Thompson SMG, the other full auto weapon then in inventory, or simply a myth generated by the BAR's loyal users. I have heard Marines swear that a .45 caliber bullet from an M1911A1 will knock you flat even if it hits you in the thumb. Good press for old slabsides, but not true. I agree that Browning was probably simply trying to come up with an automatic rifle that a single soldier could carry, and left the tactics to the army. The lack of a quick-change barrel and a larger magazine were probably due to the fact that they were harder to design in a cheap, light and reliable weapon, and the fact that the army didn't ask for them. At the time the weapon was designed, detachable magazines were still somewhat of a novelty, and a larger magazine would probably be more prone to jamming. As to the reason for the Marine Corps move to the three BAR squad, the increased firepower is an advantage that would be welcomed by a unit that had outside firepower resources or one that didn't. I think that the reason the Marines moved that way first (the US Army did the same both officially and in the field without a paper T/E change) is that they were more likely to have to rely on organic firepower. Another huge advantage is the tactical equality of three equal fire teams. The old practice of a fire, maneuver and command element was not so hot if your fire element (with the BAR) needed to move and be supported by the command or maneuver elements, etc. The Marines would move more quickly against a defense than the Army, without waiting for support, and the need for improvement in infantry firepower and tactics was more keenly felt. [ April 19, 2002, 12:21 AM: Message edited by: BloodyBucket ]

I have been told that the bipod on the M1918A2 BAR was often chucked by the men using it. Picture Probably an effort to cut down on weight and noise. Interesting that the original version had no bipod. There was also an adjustable stock rest available. I have never read of that device being used in the field, or noticed any pictures of BARs with that gizmo attached. The fact that it was reliable, accurate and available probably accounts for the popularity of the weapon, rather than it being being better than what the Germans, Japanese or others had. I can only guess that the BAR was never replaced during WWII because it was "good enough". When the Germans came up with the MG34, they were prohibited from having heavy machineguns, and were forced to come up with an all around MG that could be classified as light, IIRC. The Americans probably figured, in the low budget, post WWI years that the BAR was what they won the last war with and let it go at that. The Marines were the first to come up with a three BAR, fireteam based squad. Probably a result of the Marines not having access to the same fire support that the Army had. You could argue that the Germans, not having the luxury of a surplus of fire support, had to rely on the MG to provide the oomph that the Americans had in the form of artillery and air support. That might be another reason for the BAR lasting so long. As to what JMB was thinking of when he came up with the design, I would guess, since I really haven't read anything on his thoughts, is that he was trying to provide the infantry with fire support that could go "over the top". I would wager he was after an "assault" rifle, and since the tripod mounted HMG was showing itself to be more than up to the task of defensive fires, the lack of a changeable barrel and the twenty round magazine were small matters. Twenty is still four times what went in an 1903 Springfield, and a charge is not supposed to be a prolonged, barrel changing event. I have heard that the BAR lives on, in some form, in the mechanism of the new US GPMG. If we are going to have holidays to honor great Americans, I wouldn't mind having a Monday off in honor of John Moses Browning.

Count her teeth?