Gremlin

Very cool. I've wondered: why do Allied mine field signs also have German warnings? It should at least say something like "Cozy spot in the shade--sit a spell, Freund!" ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

I think part of the problem may be that many CM battles are very small scale, with units right in each others' faces before you know it. AT guns tend to be more safely employed at longer ranges, afaik, though your kill chance is of course greater when the target is closer, because of muzzle velocity. The 88mm PaK 43 had a maximum range of 14,100 yards, for instance. Your best hope for them in CM seems to be careful positioning and hiding, and also massing them with overlapping fire lanes. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman [This message has been edited by Gremlin (edited 12-27-2000).]

Another vote for move to contact, preferably with Pillar's implementation. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

Good point, Monte99: of the many gaming BB's I've been on, this is the only one where intelligent, adult discussion is the norm instead of the rare exception (excepting a couple topics that will remain nameless ). ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman [This message has been edited by Gremlin (edited 01-27-2001).]

It may not be practical for you atm, but if you get a chance, try to learn German: it's a fascinating language with a great body of literature--and of course it applies to WWII studies nicely ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

The range is probably too great for even the largest CM2 battles (?), but including the massive German Karlgerät tracked siege mortars (600mm and 540mm) would be very fun, if imbalanced You have to love guns nicknamed Thor and Odin. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman [This message has been edited by Gremlin (edited 12-26-2000).]

Imo, there are definitely times as the defender when its better to let loose with long-range weapons once the enemy enters their effective ranges, than it is to wait for the hordes to be right on top of you, especially since the attacker usually outnumbers you. Just as they can break, so can you, though you at least get foxholes to cower in It seems better to attrit them as they approach, assuming you have well placed defenses with fall-back positions for when the arty comes in. (Admittedly irrelevant with things like AT guns.) ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn Don't expect anything like a subtle, idiomatic translation, but a lot of people say it works decently. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

Interesting isn't it, how we can blithely write off certain units from the beginning of a scenario as utterly expendable (recon forces, etc.)? CM is more like a wonderfully sophisticated form of chess, with pieces and rules abstracted from history, than it is a recreation of war. In CM there's no real sense of cruelty, horror, suffering, and death. I'm glad CM treats war like a game ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman [This message has been edited by Gremlin (edited 12-26-2000).]

History, as common sense and any historiographer would tell you, is subject to or created by interpretation, as are all human experiences. Direct unmediated perception of "the truth" or "thing in itself" is, according to many schools of thought, an impossibility, though others would of course disagree So it's definitely questionable that someone who was an eyewitness to an event has a greater understanding of at least certain aspects of it than one who can carefully judge multiple sources of information about the event later. As for using wargames to second-guess history, that's comical. Remember that CM and other wargames are themselves essentially interpretations of history, as all the arguments on this board about the game's accuracy show. Meaning no disrespect at all (as I have great admiration for CM's design), BTS reduced human behaviour (morale for instance) down to relatively basic mathematical or logical formulas (by practical necessity), which is obviously an extreme oversimplification of real life. For every other inclusion, exclusion, formula, and so forth in CM and any other simulation, there had to be latter-day interpretation both of which sources to treat as accurate and worthy of attention and then how to read them and apply them to the game design. So, trying to apply CM to history is somewhat like trying to talk intelligently about D-Day if you've only read one author's books on it. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman [This message has been edited by Gremlin (edited 12-26-2000).]

German HT's serve the same useful functions: not only can they quickly haul in slow-moving teams to hot spots, but their speed and MG (or larger weapon) allow for very rapid diversions and suppressive fire. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

I think speed is generally imperative. You might sacrifice careful scouting, but you can occupy decent defensive positions around the flags first if you handle things well. A relatively static defense unfortunately makes for good arty targets, as Beer_n_Pretzels noted, but if you and the enemy close on the victory locations at the same time instead of you first, you'll have a hard time dropping arty on him, since he'll be on your doorstop, and arty is vital for any CM game, imo. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

Thanks for the tip. My specific interest is in finding other relatively amateur players like myself. Now that I can beat the AI about 95% of the time, usually with crushing victories, it's time for more of a challenge. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

The ability to manually target all independently mounted AFV guns against different targets during a turn. I.e., the machine gun (guns, depending on the source) and twin flamethrowers on the German Sd Kfz 251/16 halftrack; the main gun, bow MG, and cupola MG on tanks that have them, etc. ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman

I notice the Opponent Finder board is, officially at least, only for listing network games. Where should one go to find PBEM games? Did I miss something? ------------------ War is cruel and you cannot refine it. --Sherman