Doug Williams

Good thread, great responses so far. Bookmarking.

IIRC, what you are witnessing when this happens is an abstraction of infantry close assaulting a vehicle. They are supposed to be doing more than just tossing grenades, though the game just uses the grenade throwing animations.

Like Ian pointed out, PBEM is kind of a misnomer. Almost everyone uses Dropbox (and many also use CM Helper) for file exchanges now. As far as how long to complete a H2H (PBEM) match.....that depends on the size of the battle, how fast you and your opponent can get to turns, and even on time zones. I generally like to play opponents who can do a turn a day, barring vacations, sickness, etc. With a fast opponent (a turn or more a day) we can generally get through a Small QB in a couple of weeks. OTOH, I just started a HUGE QB that may take months. There's no law that says you only have to have one H2H game going at a time, however. I usually have three to six concurrent H2H games.

Welcome aboard, Squallion. :-) When you are ready to take it to the next level (PBEM instead of playing against your computer), feel free to contact me.

My experience is that I build my own gaming computers, and have since, oh....the late 1980s. I'm probably an "outlier", however.

Ok special reply for Jock. "Cause they've already bought it" sucks as a argument for putting CM on Steam. Casual Gamer 001 buys CM thinking it's like CoH.....finds out it's hard to learn, and whines on the Steam forums. No thanks. Not familiar with Paradox. I, as an adult, have limited free time. Can't learn every game out there. I choose to devote most of my gaming time to CM. Want to play? No. No time. Got a job, a house, a wife, etc. CM is the only "difficult" game I have time to learn. Everything else I play is strictly "beer & pretzels" gaming. That is much more the norm now than back in those days, IMO.

"Transparency" "acknowledgement" "petty" "pretentious" "intuitive". Sounds like a modern political speech. Are you running for office? You know lots of buzzwords. BFC is under no obligation to explain their business decisions to you, me, or anyone. They will do what they think is best for the continued growth and prosperity of their business. Many of us here have been trying to tell BFC what to do/explain themselves since the late 1990s. Good luck.

@SgtHatred & von Luck I was merely making an attempt at humor. Calm yourselves, and stay away from any thread that has "Peng" in the title. Gotta love when FNGs come on here and get all "holier than thou". I believe everyone has already voiced their opinions and made any points they wanted to make regarding CM being on Steam. Further argument/discussion is basically pointless, IMO. Rest assured that BFC is aware of the existence of Steam, they know approximately how many people use Steam, and that they have considered all the pros and cons of putting CM on Steam. Steve probably read the first page or two of this thread, then lost interest. Personally, I have nothing against Steam, and own about a dozen games on Steam. If CM goes on Steam, fine with me. If not, no biggie. I'm not convinced that CM would be a big seller on Steam anyway, because of it's steep learning curve, difficult UI, and unforgiving nature. I think a lot of people might buy it, not really understanding what it is, and become frustrated quickly.

Infants suckling on the teats of Steam. Wouldn't know a CD Rom if it changed their diapers. Have only heard of floppy disks from stories their grandfathers told around the Cathode Ray Tube.

Tank crews are already "auto panicked" when they lose their ride.

What do you mean "relic of the early to mid 2000s"? I have underwear older than that. I started computer gaming circa 1982.

Well, IMHO, this Steam discussion, interesting as is once was, is over. What's your favorite live performance?

That makes some sense.

Ok. Me too.

I can understand that.

Calm down. Nothing to see here.

Well those posts make some sense, Junior Members SgtHatred and CombatDave. Are you Steam representatives, in some capacity? If so, I'm sure BFC is flattered. :-)

PC Gamer had, IIRC, a noticeably higher "production value" than Computer Gaming World, but that did nothing to offset the pungent aroma. I literally could barely stand to read PC Gamer because of the offensive odor. If memory serves, I even managed to write a letter to the editor about it. Computer Gaming World, on the other hand, had the soothing ink & newsprint smell that I love, like walking into a book store.

Thanks for the info, but why should I care if the games that I purchased outside of Steam, such as Panzer Corps, Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, and Wasteland 2, are now on Steam? Why should this matter to me, as an end user? I already purchased the games, outside of Steam, so what difference does it make to me if they are sold through Steam, or not? If there is some sort of benefit to me to be gained by these games now being on Steam, will I have to purchase them again through Steam in order to gain these benefits? I'm genuinely curious about this.

Thanks for the information. Great post.

Interesting how it seems to have completely passed me by that Steam is so important these days. Sure, I have a few games on Steam, perhaps twelve or so, of which only perhaps two are actually installed on my HD right now. I don't think I've even played half of them, since I bought them during some $5 sale and figured I would get around to them "some day". Just checked my desktop, and I have the following games installed at the moment: CMBN, CMFI, CMRT: Obviously not Steam. Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition 1 & 2: Don't think these are on Steam. I know I did not purchase them through Steam, and they auto patch without Steam. Doom 3 BFG edition: Decided to play through this again once I saw the Doom 4 teaser trailer. Have the CDs somewhere in my basement, but decided to purchase it again through Steam for convenience of getting it running on a modern PC, patching etc. Still a fantastic game. Starcraft 2: Not Steam. XCom Enemy Unknown: Steam. Panzer Corps/Allied Corps and all DLC: I did not buy these through Steam, though I think they are on Steam now. Playing through the German Grand Campaign DLC again. Games I have on order: Wasteland 2: Bought it through Kickstarter. Put in the extra $$ for the boxed edition. It's well into beta now. Don't know if it's available on Steam or not, but I'm supposed to receive a download link via e-mail once it is finished.

PC Gamer stunk. No, literally, it smelled bad. I don't know if it was the ink or the paper but I did not like the smell of it. Computer Gaming World had that nice newsprint smell. Loved it.

I heard about CMBO before the demo was even released, back when it was supposed to be "computer ASL". Can't remember where....probably Computer Gaming World magazine, which I subscribed to for years. I had cardboard boxes full of them. After that, I made it my business to locate the BTS (now BFC) web site and follow the development. Been here ever since.

Actually, in my previous anecdote, I had remembered incorrectly. It wasn't my dismounted Quad 50 team that disabled the Brumbar, it was my FO team! LOL! I found the video I posted on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiND2ZNXGZI

@ Michael E Not arguing with your historical assessment, but if BFC wants to discourage me from occasionally using dismounted crews in an infantry capacity, they could (and have) let the game give more points to my opponent for my crew casualties, as c3k pointed out. I actually rarely use crews for infantry combat, basically because they suck at it. But I don't just automatically run them deep into my side of the map either. They often make good "eyes & ears" and can occasionally be used to occupy undefended/lightly defended victory obejectives. Long story short, I try to find something useful for them to do, without getting them killed (hopefully). Edit: Although, as an anecdote, I was recently playing in a CMFI tournament, and the scenario we were playing (forget the name of it) had the Germans attacking an American held village. The German side got several Brumbars, the Americans got a few Shermans, and a Quad 50 cal. Well, my Quad 50 crew wasted most of it's ammo bouncing shells off the Brumbars, and finally ran out of ammo about halfway through the game. I had them dismount, because at that point they were sitting ducks. Not long after that, the Quad 50 was destroyed, but the crew was just fine. They had small arms and some grenades. The map was small, so I couldn't really run them away, so I sent them to cover. My opponent tried to flank me with a Brumbar and got near the dismounted Quad 50 crew. For some reason, the Brumbar got turned around with it's main gun pointing away from the village I was defending, so I had the crew close assault the Brumbar, which resulted in it being immobilized, rendering it completly useless with it's MG pointing away from the action. Medals were awarded, of course. :-)