Triumvir

That would be the Ultimax LMG, produced by Chartered Industries of Singapore. Since it's also used by special forces as, in effect, a 5.56 SMG thanks to the low recoil, I'd argue that the functionality is not that hugely different. It also takes M-16 style 30 round magazines, so the line blurs even more. The real drawback I see to a drum is not the usage of the drum, but the loading of it in the field. It's a gvdljoh (pardon my french) hard reload if all you have is loose rounds. Then again, you might say a similar thing about relinking belts from loose rounds. As for a belt-fed SMG, well, I haven't seen any labelled as such in production, though I have heard of Minimis being cut down with folding stocks and shortened barrels to be used for the SMG role for special forces. Though that again is a somewhat blurry boundary.

Drums are not completely phased out. I've used a 5.56 LMG with 100 round drums in service. It's a cast iron bitch to reload once you pass 60 rounds, but it works just fine. I preferred it to the belt on the 7.62 MG we had because you could actually fire on the move. Resupply is trivial because you can dump a 100 round drum into your hip pocket or into the pouches on your webbing; and so can your buddies. For sustained fire, it's not so great; but that's what 7.62 MGs are for. We used drums because belts tend to get tangled in jungles, and because it's harder to return fire immediately if you get caught in an ambush with a belt-fed weapon. That LMG is, I believe, in use by some special forces units as an optional weapon because it can, with the right accessories, shrink down to M4 carbine size. If you're strong enough to aim with one hand, you can fire one handed because the recoil is incredibly low.

But as everyone who's played Renegade Legion knows, the good guys wear black...

I'd rather take greens on the attack. The sheer weight you can bring on the enemy, especially in larger games, is enough, especially when you come to artillery. HE kills, not bullets. All you have to do is, well, treat your troops realistically. This means no 400m charges over open ground. No assaults without first softening up the target positions. CAREFUL recon. I'll be more than happy to take you on in a PBEM if you'd like. On defence, though, greens have issues. Strangely, the better the enemy attackers, the better it is for the green player since the opposing infantry will run out ammo that much faster and become vulnerable to counterattacks.

Did you know that if you look at a unit's kills at the start of a movie turn, you can tell what it's killed before it actually happens? In a gunnery test I just ran at 2000m, I was futzing about with the kill display to see how a particular tank was doing; I was surprised at the start of turn when all of a sudden I saw two tanks registered as kills, with 6 infantry casualties. Since the turn is already calculated, all the movie shows is the effects of the turn. It doesn't make any sense to update the kill counter in quasi real-time, since most people won't notice it anyway. But if you just ended a turn in a tense standoff, if you're the type who can't bear to wait, you can click on that unit and view the kill display. You can't tell for certain if you've lost because you might have been killed, and then no kills are displayed -- but you can tell if you've won. Anyone else been using this feature?

Certainly early war scenarios in the Pacific would be interesting. For example, the advance down Malaya by the Japanese would have a good example of how determined infantry can overcome larger numbers of green troops. Or how even what may seem pathetic tanks are painfully effective against troops without AT assets. Even a little tank with a 37mm gun and MG is a monster when you have no counter, whether Type 97 or Stuart. It's not all jungles and islands; Kohima, Singapore, Kota Bharu, the whole damn Imphal campaign... Admittedly one of the problems with the game would be that as the war advanced, the game would become painfully imbalanced. A single platoon of Shermans can slaughter a battalion of Japanese.

I think you lot want this.

My bad, I meant the battles Wingate's columns fought on the way back to the Chindwin. Got confused with the Chindits, obviously; brain fart!

The site is hosted in Japan; ergo it's the Japanese equivalent of Geocities banner-crap.

Is it purely island hopping or do you make any attempt to represent CBI/SE Asia? I'd like to fight out Gotanda's ride or Wingate's Chindwins... Canadians as Aussies and Poles as Indians should do nicely for representing those nationalities...

Incidentally, I strongly deny any statements to the effect that I am working in deliberate conjunction with either Simon or Edward. Furthermore, I'm no antipodean. Even if some of them are rebranding themselves as Asians nowadays (which they may have stopped doing.) Again, the only reason I stepped in is because I wanted to warn John Salt. I've watched him post on USENET the past six years; enjoyed his posts; don't want to see him stuck to tar baby. No further contributions to this thread.

Steve, Your comment about my animosity clouding my posts is fair enough -- witness my entry here! --, and is why I do not often reply to Slappy or talk about him. As I said, I get dragged down to his level when I start discussing stuff there, and I don't appreciate that. As for the rewrite, I think we both agree on how a complete rewrite is usually better than an incremental stuffing, mostly because the experience from the initial write is _invaluable_. You guys are lucky in that you are your own managers and therefore when the issue of a rewrite comes up, you do not freak at the thought. Thanks for answering my questions on TO&E and ORBAT; I promise I won't reply to Slappy again anytime in the near future.

Seanachai, I'm well aware of the phenomenon of (anagram)s occasionally being right. Slappy is certainly an (anagram). But his hitrate is so damn low and he takes such a long route getting there that the occasional hits are crowded out by the forest of misses and _ridiculous_ extremes. Specifically, comparing underwear to Bren tripods is ridiculous; I'm even willing to claim that yes, nasty underwear can definitely distract the wearer. You try wearing disposable undies in the field for three days without changing, thanks to being shoved around here and there, tell me how uncomfortable it is. But to group that discomfort with an item that actually reduces recoil, allows for preset fire along expected paths and generally sings and dances is like grouping a rat and a rhinoceros when trying to figure out how much weight a floor will take; yes, they both have four legs and they both have a tail but no, somehow the two aren't quite the same mass. Gresham's Law modified: Slappy's idiocies drive out his good posts. (A _slightly_ more long-winded version of JonS's post, which I just noticed...)

Steve, Thanks for the detailed reply. I guessed that fitting this behaviour in would be a real bear. I agree with you 100% on how hacks create bugs -- I've built enough apps to know that the 10% of crappy work you slam in the week before the deadline creates 90% of the bugs... and that it's usually better to rewrite than to shove three pounds of crap into a one pound caviar bag. I'm quite salivating over the future of the rewrite -- will this allow us to create TO&E on the fly? Can leadership apply to different unit types i.e. a Panther be the equivalent of platoon leader for infantry -- or better yet, be led by a infantry company commander for close support? (Though to be honest, hearing that all will be in the rewrite sends warning shivers up and down my spine, because having rewritten a parser three times so far to radically changed spec, I know that waiting for the rewrite can be iffy... but then again, you don't have the same ridiculous arbitrary deadlines that most programmers do.) As for the hacks for swapping in a PPsH for an MP40, assuming that the two have different costs (since I remember someone saying a couple months back that the PPsH had 70 firepower at 40m range) will this still affect the cost of the unit? Say I buy a German platoon A with MP40s, is the swap handled when I load the battlefield or will I have to buy German platoon B with PPsH? As for my entry to the thread, it was certainly inflammatory and full of condescension. This is because I genuinely dislike Slapdragon and his attitude. I think the clearest sign that I dislike him is that the whole point of my post -- to tell John not to reply to him because he's an energy creature -- got completely dropped because of my bemoaning what a <anagrams are probably inflammatory too> Slappy is. I'm quite sorry about that; once I set finger to keyboard, I completely forgot the point of my post because he annoys me enough. Your point is taken, and apologies for the somewhat petulant tone in my first reply to you. In mitigation, all I can say is that I intended to make a contribution, but got so annoyed at Slappy that I forgot to make the contribution. <anagrams> do that to me. The residual annoyance tipped the scales and let me keep that first paragraph instead of just getting rid of it, like the other three I'd written. Seanachai, What can I say but the above paragraph. JonS, I'm not sure if the ammo for AT weapons is handled quite the same as the squad loadout in my proposal. As I understand it, the amount of ammo fluctuates in a band for each type. So for example, taking a random tank, there are 30-40 HE rounds, 27-34 AP rounds, 0-3 smoke and 0-1 tungsten. All in all the total number of AT weapon rounds can vary from tank to tank. (CD at the office, so can't verify this, alas) To convert the analogy, for AT weapons to be handled the same way as my squad weapons suggestion, after this initial distribution, for each round there is a 95% chance that it would keep it status and a 5% chance that it would change to a different type of round. I can't imagine that BTS would do this particular implementation since the randomisation has already happened. If the number of AT weapon rounds was fixed, however, at 30-30-2-2 and then each of these had a chance to become a different round type, that would be closer to my suggestion. Of course, that's all moot since it's not going to happen till the rewrite and the rewrite changes everything.

BTS, it's your BBS. If you want to ban people, more power to you. It's one way of suppressing dissent. That aside, understanding the difficulties in representing offensive and defensive TO&Es which came up in this thread, may I ask if it is possible to assign a random TO&E in a future CM? Let's take a hypothetical German squad as an example. The TO&E for it might be 6 rifles, 1 SMG and 1 LMG. For each unit in the squad, there is a 95% chance that the weapon assigned is in fact the weapon in the TO&E. But 5% of the time, there exists a chance that this may be any other weapon possible, including foreign weapons. There should of course be a weighted distribution based on the nationality of the user -- slightly more likely that it's a national weapon rather than captured (say about 25% more chance in general) So Schutze Karl might be the lucky (unlucky, more like) person who out of the six rifles gets stuck with lugging around the MG34 that he inherited from the last squad he was in that got wiped out by the hordes of oncoming Ivans. The likelihood of there being 8 MG-42s in the squad exists; but honestly, the likelihood is so rare -- say 10% to pick up an MG-42 times 5% repeated 7 times -- that I would think that the ahistoricity can be accepted. Sure, play balance is an issue; if you buy 1 company, there is a reasonable chance that one squad might have a non-standard TO&E weapon that boosts firepower tremendously. But that squad might also draw a rifle for their MG-42 gunner... I'd think that the occurrence would be low enough that there should be no reasonable impact on cost, which will probably be absorbed by the bulk purchase discount. Since the user will not know until the game begins exactly what his squad's weapons are, the purchase menu showing only TO&E, this will also discourage the possible tactic of purchasing then unpurchasing then repurchasing until you get enough non-standard squads to make your opponent very very unhappy. Scenario designers should also not be allowed to tweak the weapons. This is to prevent the deliberate ahistorical creation of squads equipped exclusively with MGs for use in scenarios. The impact on the game mechanics is minimal. The coolness factor is passably high, though; seeing that one squad in the battle with an extra MG42 adds a small but valuable element of uncertainty. The coding factor, however, may be a serious issue; given that TO&E are fixed, BTS may have written in optimizations based upon that assumption. Nevertheless, this isn't asking for it to be done; but rather how much effort it would take to do. Should I spin this off into another thread, BTS? Edit: By the way, all figures on here were obtained by the usual SWAG methods. Furthermore, as goes without saying, this should apply to all infantry TO&Es irrespective of nationality. [ April 17, 2002, 12:40 AM: Message edited by: Triumvir ]

I think John is being admirably restrained in his dealings with Slapdragon, someone to whose level I refuse to sink. Slappy may have issues with reading and comprehension, not to mention ego; perhaps this is why he's happy to scull about in the tranquil pond of this BBS, rather than in the slightly less tranquil Big 8, let alone the alt.* hierarchy. John has done a considerable amount of research in his time and is, unlike Slapdragon, able to quote accurately from other posts, remember what his position was earlier in the day, and provide cites with page numbers, instead of vague hand-wavings "according to Hogg." BTS may want this BBS to be nicey-nicey; hey, it's their BBS and I'm all for letting them screen out behaviour they don't like. All I ask is that when UBB comes out with a killfile or a scoring system where we can filter out authors, they upgrade to it; in the meantime, we have no choice but to listen to idiots and tune them out as best they can. For those who say that you can skip someone's post, I say that the mere name is enough to piss me off by association and I'll be very happy to not see it at all thankyouverymuch, a position nicely consistent with BTS'.

Would BTS consider releasing the format of a .cmb file? This would speed up the development of a strategic layer immensely. Since BTS has said that they do not support the concept of an ongoing campaign game, it is unlikely that such a strategic layer will come into conflict with BTS at any point in the near foreseeable future.

Would BTS consider releasing the format of a .cmb file? This would speed up the development of a strategic layer immensely. Since BTS has said that they do not support the concept of an ongoing campaign game, it is unlikely that such a strategic layer will come into conflict with BTS at any point in the near foreseeable future.

Hmm... it's always interesting hearing others talk about how arty sounds on the receiving end; I've only ever heard it from the giving end! It's always better to give than to receive... Incidentally, when a 155mm round goes off under max charge, the shockwave has to be felt to believed. It's particularly interesting if you're standing right next to the barrel, pulling the firing lever...

Incidentally, ASL Veteran, the reason that the French advanced in rushes in 1915-1916 was that they went through their equivalent of the Somme in Lorraine in 1914. Plan XVII called for exactly the same thing that Dorosh is talking about -- massed close-order charges over open territory, using 75s as direct support, just like Napoleon's armies did. The result? According to this source,Battle of the Frontiers 300,000 casualties, with the men mowed down in droves The Old Contemptibles did the same to the Germans in 1914, during the Kindermord bei Ypern; and they did that with Lee-Enfields, not Vickers. (Though the Kindermord may have been a bit overplayed -- see MHQ for details. I have no problems believing that WWI soldiers would initially advance blindly into machine gun fire; the bravest are also the first to fall. By the time the Americans came into the war, there had been enough proof of how deadly the MGs were that they were able to avoid the ghastly learning curve that Europe had; and therefore didn't suffer the same winnowing of their best and brightest. Dorosh is perfectly right when he says that we are all conditioned by society's imagery of the machine gunner as conductor of a modern Todestanz; even when I knew that the MGs in basic were firing 5 feet above my head and that even if I jumped up and down they wouldn't hit me, I still kept my head down. But to someone who'd never been exposed to that... that's a different story. But as for men taking cover in rushes... that I can also believe; these men are called _survivors_. Having survived their first brush with an MG and having seen what it could do, they certainly weren't about to repeat what their absent friends had done. As for a rolling of 1 or 6 and walking, that's a bit of hyperbole but not too far off. Looking at Casualties, we can see that for the worst off country, Austria-Hungary, you had a 10% chance of surviving unhurt. You might as well be playing Russian Roulette with an automatic. Incidentally, this is why the French unjustly earned their nickname of surrender monkeys -- if 76% of your class was killed or wounded in war, you might not be quite so sanguine about going to war again. It's also why they're still leery of the British; the British never bore as heavy a burden as the French. Let's not talk about the Americans' contribution to WWI. It only invites trolls. The short of it is that CMBO is not going to provide as accurate an assessment of the first day of the Somme as we might like to see. Nor will it mimic Ypers or Lorraine; but just about any other battle in WWI can be reasonably well modelled (i.e. gives the expected result) given the current state of HMGs.

JWXSpoon, was that in Panama?

And some conspiracy kook will see them on the tank-transporter and jump up and down about sekrit UN camps in Texas... (of all places, Texas!) By the by, T-62 != T-64 by a long, long shot.

Steve, do you mean a T-54/55? Cause I can't find any references to a russian T-52... the only thing I could find was an Indian site claiming to have captured T-52s in one of the Indo-Paki wars, but the picture of the T-52 looks awfully like a Sherman 75 to me. Other Indian websites reference a T-52, but I can't find any details on that...

I dunno... I thought Stalingrad would have been pretty good if they'd shown all of it. Remember that Stalingrad, like Das Boot, was a snippet together of a TV series -- all the highlights were compiled into a single movie. But I agree; even though there's some authenticity to setting fire to a tank for showing, it's something that could be duplicated reasonably by smokepots. Also, T-34s are comparatively cheap and easy to come by...

I rather think that an intelligent foreigner would _not_ have missed it thus rendering your disclaimer rather irrelevant.