dieseltaylor

I was thinking of how you get them to fire only tungsten in CM*1. Sorry if you read it as CMBN.I should have made it clearer. : (

Of course I feel exactly the same way when I think to complain about a fault in anything I buy. They did their best. Actually on reflection Sixxkiller I am not sure the analogy works as I am not sure what $65 gets from my wife ...... and actually whether she has been advertising for that matter.

JonS As for a campaign guide the answer would appear to be No. I assume you are asking as you wish to design/link several scenarios in a campaign. My concern is that the scenarios to be linked may have play balance problems as currently there are acknowledged problems with tank accuracy and several other game mechanisms some of which are certainly in V1.01 to be cured. If they affect the initial battle severely ..... your campaign may work poorly. Unfortunately, or possibly fortunately, I am not a beta-tester so I am unaware of what changes may be occurring - I know there are 70+ changes. JonS perhaps is a beta-tester and knows more than me on what is in the patch.

Rik Mond I think anyone who has played the CM series for any length of time will know there are "bad" maps - or rather bad designers, or good designers having an off day. Realistic scenery is only part of the mix. As you say there can be fantasy maps also. However bad maps can be realistically excellent or imaginary excellent and that comes in the next stage of design. If it is designed as a scenario arranging for reinforcement hexes to be in line of sight of existing or probable enemy units is a definite bad map. If it is simply a map then loading all the good terrain one side of a river and throwing in a nice flat open flood plain the other could be highly realistic but whether for gaming purposes it is a good map would be moot. In any event designers can do want they want but there have been some poor maps and scenarios made. I have played many hundreds of games and the vast majority on medium or larger maps and in all honesty that is relatively rare. If I look at WEBoB club I think I am one of the top three players in total games played and I only joined that when I was slowing down in 2004. Prior to that my record was eleven CMBB PBEMs at a time. I am not saying this because me playing lots of maps/scenarios makes my view better it is simply that if we do not know each others experience levels of CM we could be talking past each other. You may be highly familiar with CMSF and its maps of which I know nothing.

With V1.01 coming the usefulness of such a guide might be limited.

Jon and Rockin - for longer visablity do you want use the WIKI for modding smart tips? It is virgin area at the moment : )

For the life of me I cannot understand why people play games solo.* Ok PBEM takes longer but it does mean that two brains are involved. Solo play is a sort of necrophilia where you rely on the final twitches of a departed intelligence whereas you could be having a much more interesting/testing time wrestling against another live brain. *Okay for getting the hang of the system

Yikes. Sure going to make scenario design checks important.

My gut feeling here is the RockinHarry is actually being rather broad brush on what to expect. I fear that without an idea as to commonness of each sort of land division we may get some sort of generic Western Europe . Western Europe is a very large place with distinctive land usage and geographical features. Most people would know Holland from Normandy by looking at an old photo : ) Normandy is defintely hedge country and in villages/towns stone walls of various heights would be very common. And iron railings on top of a low wall were quite common outside wealthier properties. There are exceptions on the coastal areas and towards Cherbourg as to the amount of hedge and wall. Ditches are just as effective for dividing fields for both ownership and drainage. A common and cheapish wooden fence would be palings which are held upright by two wires running through them - the palings would be sufficient for small animals to be kept in or out but only small scale use. Hedges obviously were free and never wore out BTW wire for cattle - I assume RH is thinking barbed wire or electrified - neither of which I think likely. Please don't get me wrong there is the possibility for all types but with practice you can look at old pictures of countryside and get a reasonable idea of where it is by the terrain, land use; and to make it really easy, style of architecture. And of course it is 1944 so the land use is 1930's not 1960,1990,2011. For instance in 1930 The Uk had around 800,000 horses on farms and about 30,000 tractors so the landscape would have reflected the need for forage etc for horses. By 1940 it was nearly 100,000 tractors and 600,000 horses. I have not got figures specifically for horse on farms for France but the total for 1930 was 2.9m. which would include race horses and horses working in transport and those of the French Army. The French Army conscripted 529,000 horses in 1939. Incidentally the fence I said I thought high pasture is actually wrong as I now recall they tend to have a trestle and not post support. Post supports being a very silly option on rocky ground. : ) I am not a designer and the choices that BF give a designer may be rather limiting .... but I hope what I add may make you look at the design of countryside with new eyes and as you design in different regions try and get the local feel.

Apples or walnuts?

The night sky was moonless with between 2 miles (3 km) and 7 miles (11 km) of visibility. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tassafaronga Interesting to compare the Wikipedia with the hyperwar http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/USN-CN-Tassafaronga/index.html This from a fan site :

I think we in this context is gamers. Wine Cape has an exciting proper job, though some might believe it to be fun!. He is also a beta-tester and has provided some of the threads here with good information*. I wouldn't want him to be upset! : ) *I am thinking particularly on gyro-stabilisers which Hunnycutts huge work on Shermans is woefully inadequate about.!

The fence is not part of the thread really but I have had a concern for some time that the post and rail fence is not a very European type of fence. Or perhaps I should say Western European. In relation to an apple orchard sending your pigs or other animals in requires a stock proof barrier so a hedge is preferable. The only recollections of use I have from photos seen is uplands where I assume timber is not in short supply and /or rocks are not common. So talking Swiss Austrian German French uplands.

Very cunning An elegant solution

Anyway I have a bit more time available. If you look at the list the average for the two sides spotting it is 33 for the Shermans and 27 for the Panthers which seems quite sane. However in over a third of the results the Sherman never spotted the Panther at all. In fact both tanks had a result, in consecutive tests where they had 58 seconds under observation and at a guess at least two shots fired at them but still remained oblivious of the enemy tank . Anyway if you strip out the non-spotting results 1020 seconds the average spotting time is around 19 seconds. Do the same for the Panther and the average and the average drops to 24 seconds. But then averages are funny things and as it happens the Panther will spot a Sherman more often than the other way around in a minute at 1000 metres. Perhaps though stopping the test at 60 seconds does make a distortion in terms of real life but is quite important in game terms for orders.

Well in a sense nothing. I see what siffo's figures reveal but if I were to hypothesise my feeling that the gunner with a 2.5 scope - which is pretty darn wide at 1000 metres would spot first over an M1 eyeball. However there are other things to consider such as how many crewman can actually view per tank. And are they assisted or hampered. Anyway returning to graphing and now bear in mind how the test is structured. This is important. When a tank spots another tank it fires about 20-30 seconds later so this gets interesting as you would expect the target tank to then notice it was under fire - this reducing the potential spotting time for the target. I am not meant to be doing this sort of work as we are on holiday. And with V1.01 in the offing who knows whether this will make this work redundant. Does a halftrack spot aswell as a tank at 1000 metres , what happens if it is sideways on etetc etc. However from the point of view of running a tournament I still feel the huge basic variability could be a problem. BTW as for quoting anecdote for an example I am sure BF does not approve of that : ) I suspect it is remembered because it was the oddity not the norm.

http://www.propublica.org/article/how-murdoch-reporters-bribes-to-british-cops-violate-us-law

Womble - that is really good news - oh that would be soo sweet. It is a shame we do not have a serious programme on TV regarding corruption and lies in governemnt both local and natiional. Anyone who reads Private Eye knows there is a lot going unpunished/under-reported. Media should also be covered in the same way. Bruce 90 - you have got that right but the real damage was done before the bailout by the Government allowing the property market to become corrupted. Blair has a huge amount to answer for. Booming economy and feel good factor great for his re-election and his image but based on a property market binge aided and abetted by estate agents, builders, building societies and the media. ANd the public fell for it as there was no countervailing arguments offered. I hope I never paid Murdoch anything in the last two decades. And he lost 0.5B$ on Myface .Yeah!

I am afraid branches low to the ground is not the way I would expect any decent apple orchard to be, I don't frquent old orchards too many times a year but ggod air flow and pruning back are considerations. So nothing lower than 6ft with the fully grown fruit on - and obviously higher earlier in the season. This is a bit of a stunner. Before you look which country produces the most apples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple

Maggie you are kidding me right! How many Nobel prize winners in Medicine does Oz have! . John Lykoudis, a general practitioner in Greece, treated patients for peptic ulcer disease with antibiotics, beginning in 1958, long before it was commonly recognized that bacteria were a dominant cause for the disease.[27] Helicobacter pylori was rediscovered in 1982 by two Australian scientists, Robin Warren and Barry J. Marshall as a causative factor for ulcers.[28] In their original paper, Warren and Marshall contended that most stomach ulcers and gastritis were caused by colonization with this bacterium, not by stress or spicy food as had been assumed before.[29] The H. pylori hypothesis was poorly received[30] so in an act of self-experimentation Marshall drank a Petri dish containing a culture of organisms extracted from a patient and five days later developed gastritis. His symptoms disappeared after two weeks, but he took antibiotics to kill the remaining bacteria at the urging of his wife, since halitosis is one of the symptoms of infection.[31] This experiment was published in 1984 in the Australian Medical Journal and is among the most cited articles from the journal. In 1997, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with other government agencies, academic institutions, and industry, launched a national education campaign to inform health care providers and consumers about the link between H. pylori and ulcers. This campaign reinforced the news that ulcers are a curable infection, and that health can be greatly improved and money saved by disseminating information about H. pylori.[32] In 2005, the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Dr. Marshall and his long-time collaborator Dr. Warren "for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease". Professor Marshall continues research related to H. pylori and runs a molecular biology lab at UWA in Perth, Western Australi

Siffo was exploring a spotting thread andin a test with a Sherman And A Panther 1000 metres aaprt these were the resulys of 50 tests I was tempted to graph it to see if there were interesting points. The first point is almost irrlevant to the graphing and that is the huge disparity in tank spotting times. Same tanks and crews can take anywhere from 1 second to over a minute to spot the target tank. Whilst arguably this is realistic I am left with the uncomfortable feeling that it is a big big variable and if I were running a tournament this kind of randomness could translate into some lopsided results given tanks potency and relatively few in game. And does this effect translate to all scenarios also so comparing scores against the AI is moot? For that matter scenario balancing must be fairly nightmare. One thousand metres is a fair distance so if I learn how to design test beds I might get a chance to try 500 metres.

Adams' Pearmain Aldwick Beauty• Alexander Alfriston Allen's Everlasting Allington Pippin American Golden Russet• American Summer Pearmain• Ananas Reinette• Annie Elizabeth Annual Sweetening Antonovka• Api Étoilé• Api Noir Ard Cairn Russet Aromatic Russet Arthur Turner Arthur W. Barnes Ashdown Seedling• Ashmead´s Kernel Autumn Pearmain Baker's Delicious Ball's Pippin• Bamfairs Barnack Beauty Bascombe Mystery• Baumann's Reinette• Baxter´s Pearmain Bazeley Beachamwell Beauty Of Bath Beauty Of Bedford Beauty Of Hants Beauty Of Kent Beckley Red(Bew) Beckley Red(Holcroft) Bédan-Des-Parts• Bedfordshire Foundling Beisly Codling Belledge Pippin• Belvoir Seedling• Benwell's Large• Bernwode Crab Bess Pool Black Gilliflower Black Prince Blenheim Orange Bloody Ploughman Blue Pearmain Bohnapfel• Bossom• Boston Russet Brabant Bellefleur• Braddick Nonpareil Bradley's Beauty Bramley's Seedling Breedon Pippin• Brown Kenting• Brownlees´ Russet Brown's Pippin• Buckinghamshire Sheep's Nose Bulmer's Norman Bundy's Ringwood Red Burr Knot Calville Blanche D´Hiver• Cambridge Pippin Cambusnethan Pippin• Capper's Pearmain• Carlisle Codlin• Caroline• Catshead Caudal Market• Cellini• Charles Ross Cherry Pearmain• Chisel Jersey• Chivers Delight Christmas Pearmain Cissy• Claygate Pearmain Cockle Pippin Cockpit Coeur De Boeuf Coker Seedling Cole Colonel Vaughan• Compton Wynyates• Corner Cottage• Cornish Aromatic Cornish Gillyflower Corry's Wonder• Cottenham Seedling Cottered Apple• Court Of Wick Court Pendu Plat Cox's Orange Pippin Cox's Pomona Crawley Beauty Cremiere• Crow Egg• Dabinett D´Arcy Spice Decio Deddington Golden Devon Crimson Queen• Devonshire Quarrenden Dirleton Red Discovery Downton Pippin• Dr Hogg Duchess Of Oldenburg Duchess's Favourite• Duck's Bill• Duke of Devonshire Dumelow's Seedling Dunn's Seedling• Easter Orange Edward V11 Eggleton Styre Egremont Russet Eldon Pippin Ellison´s Orange Emneth Early English Codlin English Greening• Esopus Spitzenburg• Eynsham Challenger• Eynsham Dumpling• Fallbarrow Favourite• Fameuse• Fearn´s Pippin Feltham Beauty Fenouillet Gris Fenouillet Rouge First and Last• Flower of the Town• Forge Forty Shilling• Foulden Pearmain• Foulkes' Foremost• Foxwhelp French Crab Gascoyne´s Scarlet Genet Moyle George Carpenter George Cave George Neal George Neilson Gilliflower• Gipsy King• Gladstone Gloria Mundi Gold Medal• Golden Bittersweet• Golden Harvey Golden Knob• Golden Noble Golden Pippin Golden Reinette Golden Russet Golden Spire Gooseberry• Grand Duke Constantine Grange's Pearmain• Granny Shan• Gravenstein Greasy Jack• Green Custard• Grenadier Grey Pippin Grime's Golden• Hambledon Deux Ans Hanwell Souring Hargreaves' Greensweet• Harvest Lemon• Harvey Hawthornden• Helmsley Market Apple• Herefordshire Beefing Herring's Pippin Heusgen´s Golden Reinette• Hitchin Pippin Hoary Morning Holland Pippin• Hollandbury• Holly• Hormead Pearmain Horsham Russet• Howgate Wonder Hubbard's Pearmain• Iffley Beefing• Iffley Codlin• Irish Peach Islay Pippin James Grieve Jennifer• Jennifer Wastie• Joaneting John Standish• Joybells• Kandil Sinap Kane's Seedling• Keeling Apple Kentish Fillbasket Kerry Pippin Keswick Codlin Kew Pippin Kidd's Orange Red King Charles Pearmain King Harry King Of The Pippins King Of Tompkins County• King´s Acre Pippin• Kingsbury Priory Apple• Kingston Black Knobby Russet Knotted Kernel Korobovka• Lady Henniker• Lady Sudeley Lady's Delight• Lady's Finger Of Hereford Lady's Finger Of Lancaster Lady's Finger Of Offaly• Lamb Abbey Pearmain• Lancashire Pippin• Lane´s Prince Albert Langleigh Delight Langley Pippin Laxton's Epicure Laxton's Exquisite• Laxton's Fortune Laxton's Royalty• Laxton's Superb Leathercoat Russet Lemon Pippin Lemon Square• Les Paysans Potentate• Lewis's Incomparable• London Pippin Long Reinette Longstart• Lord Burghley Lord Derby Lord Hindlip• Lord Lambourne Lucombe's Pine Mabbott's Pearmain• Maclean's Favourite• Madeleine• Madresfield Court• Maid Of Kent Maiden's Blush• Maltster Mank's Codlin• Mannington´s Pearmain• Margaret Margil Marriage Maker Mary Morgan• May Queen Meadfoot Wonder• Mela Carla Melon Mère De Ménage Miller´s Seedling Milton Wonder Minshull Crab Monarch Morgan Sweet Moses Tree Mother Nanny• New Rock Pippin Newton Wonder Newtown Pippin• Nine Square• Nonpareil Nonsuch Park• Norfolk Beauty Norfolk Beefing Norfolk Coleman• Norfolk Royal Northern Greening• Nottingham Pippin• Nutmeg Pippin Oaken Pin• Old Fred• Old Pearmain Onibury Pippin• Ontario Orange Orange Goff• Orléans Reinette Oslin Oxford Beauty• Oxford Conquest• Oxford Hoard• Oxford Sunrise• Oxford Yeoman• Padley's Pippin Painted Summer Pippin Parker's Pippin• Peacemaker Pear Apple• Peasgood's Nonsuch Peggy's Pride• Pigeon de Jerusalem• Pig´s Nose Pippin Pine Golden Pippin Pitmaston Pine Apple Pitmaston Russet Nonpareil Pitstone Pippin• Pomeroy of Herefordshire Pomeroy of Somerset Poor Man's Profit Porter• Powell's Russet Prinzenapfel• Profit Puckrupp Pippin• Queen Queen Caroline• Queen Cox Radford Beauty Rambour Franc• Rank Thorn Rathe Ripe• Red Army• Red Balsam Red Claygate• Red Cluster• Red Ellison Red Ingestrie Red Jersey• Red Siberian Redstart• Redstreak Reinette Clochard• Reinette Du Canada• Reinette Rouge Étoilée Reverend W. Wilks Ribston Pippin Rivers' Early Peach• Rivers' Nonsuch• Ronalds' Gooseberry Pippin Rosemary Russet Roundway Magnum Bonum Royal Jersey Royal Wilding Rymer Saint Albans Pippin Saint Cecilia Saint Edmund´s Pippin Saint Magdalen• Saltcote Pippin Sam Young• Sandling• Sanspareil Scarlet Crofton• Scarlet Nonpareil Scotch Bridget• Scotch Dumpling• Sergeant Peggy• Sharlston Pippin Sheep's Nose• Shustoke Apple Silvercup• Sir Isaac Newton´s Tree Skyrme's Kernel Smart's Prince Arthur• Sops In Wine• Stanford Seedling• Stibbert• Stirling Castle Stoke Edith Pippin• Stone Pippin• Striped Beefing Studley Crab Sturmer Pippin• Sugar Loaf Pippin Summer Golden Pippin• Summer Pearmain Summer Strawberry Sunset Suntan Sussex Mother Sweet Coppin Sweet Lading• Sykehouse Russet Taylor's Favourite• Teign Harvey Ten Commandments• Téton de Demoiselle• Thomas Rivers• Thorpe's Peach Tillington Court• Tinsley Quince• Tom Putt Tower Of Glamis Tun Apple Tupstones• Tydeman's Early Worcester Tydeman's Late Orange Underwood Pippin Upton Pyne• Venus Pippin• Violette Voyager Wadhurst Pippin• Wagener• Wardington Seedling• Warner´s King Wax Apple• Welford Park Nonsuch Wheaten Loaves• Wheeler's Russet White Joaneting White Melrose White Transparent• White Winter Pearmain• William Crump• Winston• Winter Banana• Winter Colman Winter Greening Winter Majetin• Winter Pearmain Winter Queening Wolvercote Pippin• Woolbrook Russet Worcester Pearmain Wormsley Pippin• Wotton Costard - I resist the temptation Wyken Pippin Yellow Bellflower• Yellow Ingestrie Yorkshire Greening• Young's Pinello• Zabergäu Renette • Some Of the English types. Actually I look at the list and think - if I were to invent some I could never make up such a collection.

I think there is a problem here but possibly not what it seems. : ) How big is an average Normandy field, and how big is an apple orchard? Off-hand from the various aerial photos I have seen the big orchards are small dozens, though most are a probably under 2 dozen which would make sense if you grew apples to make your cider for the following year. If a farm grew more it would probably just have more orchards rather than bigger. As to visibility the idea of kneeling or ducking down to look under the canopy seems very likely behaviour so 40 metres before non-see for infantry would seem strange. Mixed woods, as opposed to pine forests can be very difficult to see through as you can have bushes, hollies, branbles which allowing for some undulations makes them tricky places to be sure about anything. Ike in an orchard - with good visibility down the aisles, apple tree to the left and possibly bocage to the right does not actually prove much - though always nice for to see more information on WW2 terrain.

I had not realised before that Murdoch controls a religious publishing house who do the likes of Desmond Tutu. BTW is this a good program? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_Watch_%28TV_program%29 problem a question for Affy

I am kind of curious that apparently News International in the UK is ridden with an urge to get stories by any means but not so the US arm. Seems wierd. But credit where credit is due - corrupting the police , employing the police who investigated the original crimes, and general all round nastiness we appear to be leading the world.