dieseltaylor

Pesevere Lord Calvert its worth it. I am thinking of going over to PBEMH trusted mode only apart from some v. old sparring partners. The pleasure in actually knowing you are going to watch, move, watch, move, send beats handsdown the will I move or watch e-mail. If i ever go into a league I suppose I would revert -- but then just another reason not to league play : ) BTW I often run a lttle scenario like "A Deadly Affair" to get people to see trusted mode in operation. You can send it when you first start choosing your serious game, without fancy playing, and by the time you have done set-up and everything else you will be watching Trusted mode on your little demo game. [ April 16, 2004, 07:19 AM: Message edited by: dieseltaylor ]

Terry Pratchett 35 million books sold worldwide. Twenty four novels in the Discworld series. Web search will reveal all for those unenlightened as yet. You can read a wee short story here, in one of 19 languages. http://www.ie.lspace.org/books/dawcn/ Sample humour: He nodded to the troll which was employed by the Drum as a splatter [footnote: Like a bouncer, but trolls use more force]. -- Nobby takes Carrot for a drink in The Mended Drum (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)

Rune No need to hide your true ID - I recognise you as RONNIE the Fifth Horeseman of the Apocalypse. You are sympathetically covered in Terry Pratchett's "Thief of Time" with details of why you split up before they became famous. I salute you the Bringer of Kaos.

Advanced noobie Harry Ink " (a) drawing your enemy into a tight fire sack; ( the overriding mission of destroying his forces: your flag holders will end up blasted or bullet riddled fairly soon, no? Indeed, are they not candidates for HIS fire sack (pray he has only bought 81mm mortars)? " Firstly when I say grab the flags we are talking very minimal forces, depending on the terrain we could talk a squad - if it is very bad then you simply do not do it. If it is a massive wood then more can be - but not necessarily be added - as covering the approaches to flags and likely buil-up points are even more interesting propositions. As I tend to play with big points 3000 -2000 I can afford to waste a few squads if necessary. If your opponent does buy large artillery and uses it all on a couple of squads I am probably up in the cost stakes anyway. The other point is if you are both avoiding the flags to bounce the opposition they can become free! I have seen big games with some flags with nobody within hundreds of metres. Sometimes people just get too cute. I always view it like chess sometimes you have to sacrifice pawns to achieve a better position overall.

I would answer this in the CMAK thread but ....as it is here... I have read of the first French American tank battle with Stuarts dooking it out with French tanks - I think Somaus. The US unit was the first independent tank battalion.. whose number I cannot recall.

Sounds good - my your experimentation be successful ; )

Harry But then what better than to realise that the your enemy knows you are too smart to put forces onto the flag and therefore buys more tanks etc to defeat you. You promptly grab the flags and defend knowing he is say 300 - 500 points down and perforce must get this back to gain equality. Or he has to crush your force which is now on defence! Not to say I do not pass up flag grabs when terrain is far more important. But a few infantry on the flags is a great way to put the onus on your opponent to equalise the score. I will call this the "Advanced noobie" strategy.! : )

RTS!!! ....? Round Turnip Socks? Real Time Sax?? AH! Return To Sender

Ha! the add-on pack downloadable from this site.

Where is the scenario? I have tried Scenario Depot and Boots & Tracks - I want this challenge!!!

Two things - at one stage someone posted a link to a site with I think pre 2nd WW russian maps at great detail. I have a steppe one and a mountain one Cauacasus sitting on one of the computers. They were about 2 mB each. I have a sneaky feeling they did not cover the Crimea. I would tend to have my suspicions about tall pines if the area is not ,ountain as I think the southern Ukraine would be very dry and hot in the summer which makes me think more of the stunted scrubby pines being likely.

Me want power up hexes .....still missing ! Sheesh

You really must use the keyboard rather than the dropdown menu - you must be wasting hours per game faffing about when 90% of orders are H, L, F, T, E, J , V ,C and M. If you decide to stick with dropdown would you like a TCP/IP game with one minute turns? : )

JulianJ I do not think you can kill the KV from the rear at all ...! You will notice that the KV scomes fitted with a five man crew, vision/pistol slits in the side, and a rear machine gun in the turret so I am not at all surprised it notices a tank sneaking about on a battlefield devoid of cover. As an 88mm flak crew man your are probably very aware what a nice big target an 88mm is and how long it takes to get it ready to fire -- I would credit the little pixels with enough intelligence to know when the barrel starts pointing there way its time to go. The point about hidden guns destroying tanks at quite close range is not surprising - moving guns up and hoping a tank does not notice is very much chancier. BTW in North Afrika where a Panzer group ran into an artillery regiment set up in an olive grove , the closest they found one tank to its eventual killer was 6 feet from the muzzle of a six pounder - thats scarily close.

I like your suggested mix of more detailed info for the front and then becoming more vague. I like briefing that set the scene as to how long your troops have been there and where they think the front line is as that is realistic - if they have been in position for a week it makes info probably good. If they moved in prvious night probably suspect. Captured prisoners or raiding parties either side could give information such as unit type which would be legitimate info.

Good stuff Gambler - deserves pinning. Ditto Slappy - absolutely correct. The only thing I would add - which is nothing to do with scenarios - is keep a note of points spotted, and killed as a rough guesstimate might warn you there are nasty surprises still. Or possibly where your opponent must be weak.

I am not a sceanario designer. My feeling has always been that it would be great if one could underbuy units - say 300 points, and then go into the game to capture just a flag. This is designed for ending the calculation of enemy losses/flags held syndrome. We know exactly how many points the opposition has and the VPs on the board and this is totally artificial. Trading points creates an uncertainty and forces people to reconnoitre more to properly establish force size/deployment

Yes I have a foe whose file comes as a complete text - I think he uses Yahoo. Fortunately he is now using PBEMH in trusted mode so I just hit the open file on the pop-up. Everything is auto-opened for me so I then press the play button for the first movie, input my turn, watch the second movie, input turn and hten get PBEMH to send it. The question has to be : Why are not mors people using it? Fortunately all three e-mails this morning were PBEMH in trusted mode. Lovely. One of them a new convert very impressed. It took us 2 days to do turns 1 -7 , we then switched to Trusted and we are now on turn* 21 today 3 hours after I got up and on three e-mails each! *Turn as in sending a file

If you could perhaps provide more detail? Is it a currnet game and an incoming file? Or are you looking at old movies? Are you playing a game in Trusted mode? these are for kick -offs

Reminded me of trying to get Shermans to go against a Hetzer head on at short range, or even long range. Smarter than me they would not do it.

Do not forget MZO at http://central.masterzen.net/ noobie friendly and very ungroggy

Nice idea YankeeDog. It allows a better in depth defence than an ME setup but gives uncertainty which is often missing when you know the precise point count and depth of set-up areas for both sides.

I am afraid I cannot help you as I use none of the items you use. But keep persevering and just play with the settings till it works - it really is worth the effort. I have 6 games kept in order by Helper but the real benefit is running trusted mode where in 34 e-mails my opponent and I are on turn 84. I get two movies and two order turns for every e-mail received. The games are more fun to play and the time saved will lengthen your life!. You can e-mail the inventor Fuerte who is very helpful.

I agree with Cessna about tank crews tending to be blind[ish] and interested in self-preservation. Furthermore there is not only borg spotting that people have the benefit of but a tendency to be braver than in RL. I like playing the Russians , probably 50+ games worth and up to 25 tanks sometimes. I have seen some cowering and I have seen some stupid stand and fight when I want them to cower. But the beauty of the game is that it is not chess nad things do not always go exactly as you wish. It seems some people play to the mico managing level and then do not like the result as the troops exercise discretion. That rant aside as Russian I am fully aware of the pathetic AP loadout with the big tanks. If you get 10 rounds of AP you better be damm sure you are going to hit your target before you fire. Once it is all gone you are dead meat. I think this is factored into the larger tanks cower factor. Its fine to say I will kill it if I hit it but if you fire off your entire AP load at 1000 metres at a poxy MKIV you are going to regret it when something bigger turns up. I would regret it and so would my little digital tank crew. Most German tanks have a decent amount of AP and will fire away merrily because there guns are accurate at range, will kill most of what they hit outright, and those that do not kill may damage. I have seen and had German tanks cower - normally at shorter ranges when presumably they know that even Russian chances of hitting are higher!

Servif If you follow the sticky thread to MZO at the top of the CM Barbarossa to Berlin forum you will find a small , but beautifully formed site -- enough of that. If you have a look around , I think in the Strategy bit POS has posted some great graphics showing spotting distances for various terrain. And other good bits too. You could also practice at the War College!!