Triumvir

I'd suggest a not-so-simple but more faithful abstraction; allowing the player to set different engagement ranges for each weapon in the squad, as well as tracking individual ammo usages for each weapon. Steel Panthers, from the original onwards allowed you to selectively fire weapons and kept track of individual ammo counts; why not do the same for CM II? (Not CMBB, btw)

Wasn't Ack the British phonetic equivalent of today's NATO phonetic Alpha? Which would imply AA, not AD. The modern CW acronym is ADA, as far as I know.

Also please remember the difference between a foxhole and a shellscrape; I can dig a shellscrape easily in 30 minutes with nice shaping and a foot ledge so that every part of my body is under the ground. But if necessary, I'm pretty sure that you can entrench in five minutes. Course, you'll then be fscking exhausted, but that should show up in the game. Maybe there should be an entrench command that takes up time and reduces exhaustion? So after, say, 5 minutes, a regular squad is entrenched; 3 for an elite, 10 for a conscript? With the fitness ratings in CMBB, that should happily affect the speed of entrenchment too.

There's a story I saw on s.m.m.[1] a long time ago about a Croatian who joined the Canadian army after having fought in the Balkans. All went reasonably well until in one exercise the evaluators called an arty strike on the position. While all the other members of his unit followed the drill and made tracks out in a particular direction, this fellow immediately pulled out his spade and started furiously digging a foxhole. When the evaluators started screaming at him, he turned to them and said something to the effect "when the shells start falling, you'll know what works and what doesn't." I've seen pictures of German infantry entrenching under arty bombardment, and as an ex-gunner, I'd think that entrenching is the right thing to do. Certainly an FO can call an adjustment far faster than you can run.

Mmm. My post was not flamed, just ignored in preference to making flames. But you know what -- you're right. Tu quoque arguments are as infantile as the behaviour you claim to see. So I'll happily refrain from making any future comments about you in any other posts because even though <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Non amo te, Slappy, nec possum dicere quare: hoc tantum possum dicere: non amo te. (apologies to Martial) <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I should treat you with civility; the same civility you once extended to me and I churlishly disregarded. In any case, Michael has replied, and I am satisfied. Though perhaps Michael should then update his site, so that someone else doesn't visit it and wonder where he got the cite from. The site, after all, is not the same as the SL/ASL article he wrote.

<sigh> So my cite has been swamped by the usual flame gang... Never mind! Michael Dorosh, if you go to page 7 of this thread and look at my post, could you please tell me where you got your cite for the use of Bren gun tripods in the SF role? Because then we might actually drag this back on topic minus the usual kneejerks from Slappy/Brian.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Whether or not they used them is precisely the point. We know the Crocodile was used extensively - read Wilson. Still trying to figure out the tripod thing. Like I said - every man had a respirator. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Michael, on your webpage at Bren Homepage, off of the main Canuck page, you quote the following: Two items of Bren Gun equipment not commonly seen include the drum magazine, and the tripod. The tripod could be configured for antiaircraft work, as at right, or as a ground mount to fire on fixed lines. When set up as a ground mount, arcs of fire could be set with stoppers on the tripod. In static positions, such as the I Canadian Corps front in Italy in early 1944, this was actually done. The tripod could be man-packed, but was usually stored by infantry sections on their platoon vehicle. For anti-aircraft work, two additional tubes (stored inside the hollow body tubes of the tripod) could be added, elevating the gun and giving it a 360 degree sweep. The ground mount pictured above has had two rifle slings added in order to carry it. Do you have a cite for that usage? If so, then it would be a useful datapoint in this discussion.

Sig, as a platoon commander, shouldn't you already know if tank 312 has an uebercrew? Furthermore, it more accurately lets us use the crews the way they were used in real life; with the best getting proportionately more strain on them than the worst.

Why not just have the same leader bonuses applied to HQs apply to individual armoured/vehicular units?

Aaargh. Won't be able to make it this Friday, alas. I've got to do cleanup duty after my move. Down a few for me instead!

Heh, looks like we're set, Peiper! Down in the East Village, this Friday. And much grog will be drunk by us beernards... whoops started already.

Now now, John; let's not be too nasty to Slapdragon. He has a legitimate excuse -- never having served in a Commonwealth pattern army, he has no idea how utterly bloody stingy such armies are with ammo. In training, we'd usually go through two or three contacts on our basic contact rate (120 rds, for those counting.) I may not have been infantry, but the infantry wasn't much more prolific in ammo usage. Suppressive fire was only done with single aimed shots; and with MILES gear, proved to be surprisingly effective. (Although I'm quite surprised that he can talk about avoiding flame wars given that he said <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Possibly here the Australian Army acts much more like the Russian Army, where small units commanders have very little training and initiative, thus causing this basic cultural misconception between the two opinions on this (although my research indicates they performed much the same as the rest of the commonwealth) but believe me, nothing works perfect in the field. Thinking that it does is simply unrealistic.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Left-handed quasi-disavowals aren't particularly impressive coming from a peacemaker. Perhaps, like so many Americans[1], he can give but not take?) But then again, I'm biased, having been quite utterly disgusted with his behaviour during my debut on this board. Take my words with as much salt as you please. [1] Nota bene: This obviously is not a slam on Americans, but on that set of Americans who can't take criticism.

The West End's the same it's always been, full of noisy Columbia undergrads. I went up to see friends recently and they've apparently remodelled the inside; cleaned it up a bit. Now that the whole Morningside Heights area is getting gentrified, the West End's moving with the rest... I used to be on 120th and Morningside, which wasn't so great in the mornings trundling off to school (my EYES!!!)

You're treading a _very_ fine line, Mr Jackson. Yes, Slapdragon may be annoying as hell, but this is one of the few things that BTS takes a pretty nasty look at. Yes, it may be inconsistent -- but it's historically so and I'd suggest you not buck the trend. Piss him off some other way.

Oh, come on Slapdragon. I specifically said that not all Americans are Seppos. This is not an anti-American thread -- this is an anti-humourless American thread. A quite different thing, you'll agree. Not all Americans are humourless -- just those who talk about <splutter> identity theft <choke> on the _Internet_. <drum heels on floor in helpless paroxysms of laughter> It's still the case that no one knows you're a dog on the Net... and hopefully will stay that way. And to be perfectly honest, this is a quite futile thread and therefore humourous in itself.

But if it's tournament saved then you can't pre-examine the game for good setup locations and all, can you?

Oh, fer crying out loud. They're SEPPOS. Their sense of humour is surgically removen at birth and any remaining shreds of sarcasm are systematically stomped on throughout highschool until they are the very souls of earnestness, able to take offense at a single bound, stopping trains of logic with bare hands. They're Seppos, and that's all there is to be said about that. There's nothing wrong with being a Seppo, just thank Grud that not all Americans are like that. Something you have to learn to ignore. [ 09-17-2001: Message edited by: Triumvir ]

Apologies for not posting from the American side but since I have been directly affected by recent events, I remain unable to put the words together.

Yeah, BTS doesn't represnt Anzio or North Africa! Damn it, what's wrong with them!? Oh, but whoops; Totalize _does_ come under CMBO's rubric. Perhaps if you looked at the other two paragraphs instead of concentrating on the one that does a little gentle leg-tugging they may present a better picture as to wmy views on why funnies aren't represented? Since CMBO doesn't do deliberate attacks very well, there's not much point in creating engineer vehicles whose only purpose is to support deliberate attacks through obstacle reduction; not particularly far from your position.

No, no, you lot don't understand. Totalize and North Africa were not _combat_ because there were no American troops there. As for Anzio, that was obviously not combat either because the flail tanks were _in_ the assembly areas on the beach and behind the actual advance of the infantry. Often as far as 15 feet behind. Isn't that right, Slapdragon? 8) On a more serious note, while flail tanks may not have been heavily used on the average front lines -- as in leading the typical movement to contacts and hasty attacks -- they were, along with all the other funnies, most definitely used in deliberate attacks. Rightly so, as that was, after all, their raison d'etre. CMBO doesn't model deliberate attacks or defences very well because obstacles count towards the maximum number of units available. To get the right kind of force/space ratio for a deliberate defence, along with the appropriate obstacle belts, you need to set up a in an 800x1600 map and spend about 2000 pts on nothing but minefields, barbed wire and roadblocks -- and then spend 500pts on the actual units. The attacker should get about 2500 pts in total units too.

I don't suppose that anyone likes the simple idea that 500mm is designed to simulate the impossibility of destroying a bunker with any weapon in the CMBO scope, eh? Abstraction, etc. Powerful concept, that. I like what BTS did with CMBO and code reuse, but like always code reuse can lead to strange results -- just look at the ADF's kangaroos in their chopper pilot simulator.

Is no one going to mention Seelowe Heights and Zhukov's batteries of searchlights? Admittedly, they didn't work very well, but...

Come on now. Of course it was an American weapon. It has an M before the number, doesn't it? Other notable American designs are the M9 pistol, M249 light machine gun, M240 GPMG, M93 chemical detection vehicle, M3 MAAWS anti-tank weapon and the M973 tracked support vehicle.

Oh, yes; ObOT: The most overrated weapon in the game is the King Tiger. On the steppe, with kilometers worth of visibility, it may rule the world; but at CMBO ranges, i.e. under 1km, they're nowhere near worth what 3 Pz IVs would be; and that's roughly how much they cost. The most underrated weapon is the Haig tactic. Buy tons and tons of green troops and march them slowly but surely through a hail of MG and infantry fire. By the time you lose 70% of your troops, the enemy you're facing has run out of ammo and even your little nancy-boy infantry can mop them up.

I agree about the buttoning; most experienced players like to have their TCs work Israeli-style (and often end up with similar casualty rates.) As for the MGs, however you're using the MGs, mg42gunner, you're using them wrong. I've had a HMG42 rip up an advancing platoon from 600m; the platoon simply wouldn't advance and would go to ground. Eventually, they broke and ran; and they were regular troops. It helped that an AT gun killed any tank that tried to influence the battle; by itself, though, 1 HMG squad rendered an entire platoon ineffective. The key is to have them open up at sustained fire ranges; 600-300m is the optimal range for the HMGs. A battery of Vickers (i.e. 4 MGs) can work a _shocking_ toll on advancing unsupported infantry.