Doug Williams

10-4 I'll be following along. :-)

Well I say Smoke 'em if you got 'em. :-)

I'm somewhat late to this party. Is this an AAR? Where is SLIM's thread? Help?

Let's ramp this up.

All I can offer is anecdotal evidence based on my own experiences playing for many years now. Yes, the tactical AI tries to have tanks engage targets based on threat level, but I (and probably no one except the BFC coders) don't know the limits of this. Examples: A tank will target a AT team over an infantry squad (say, at a distance of 100 meters). A Panther will target a Sherman 76 over a halftrack. I don't know if the AI is smart enough to differentiate between a Sherman 75 Vs Sherman 76. Most tanks in my experience will target mortar teams over regular infantry. Light tanks are "smart enough" not to target medium or heavy tanks from the front. In fact, they will probably pop smoke and reverse.

Good point that the ASI might just mostly ignore us, in the same way that we mostly ignore ants, unless they come in our house. The thing is, we really have no idea what it would, or could, do. Prior to reading these articles, I had never heard of "The Great Filter" theory. ASI may be our Great Filter....our extinction event. Nuclear weapons almost were, and possibly still could be, I suppose.

Welcome aboard, Doc. It sounds like you have found your true home, and we are glad to have you. :-) Let us know when you feel like you are ready to enter the Thunderdome of PBEM.

These are long reads, but well worth it. AI and why we should be concerned: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html Fermi Paradox: http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/fermi-paradox.html Good luck, humans.

Not sure I've ever seen an 11 year old single post thread rise from the dead before.

Glad it's sorted out for you. Helpful hint: I keep a copy of the installer for each game and all my key codes in Dropbox folders.

I can pretty much quote every line in Tombstone. I must have seen it at least a dozen times. Used to work with a guy who could do the same, and we would go through whole scenes together just from memory.

Let's get back on topic. :-)

Me too.

Shift8, do you play H2H? Edit: I'm not an armor grog and I should just STFU and follow this thread. Shift8, if you ever want to play a QB PBEM with me, you can have Axis, I'll take Yanks and we can do an AAR here. :-)

Clint is still a badass, even in his old age. Please excuse the departure from the western genre while I post a scene from Gran Torino.

I like how dat one shot blowed up both tanks. Hyuk, hyuk. ;-)

Yes, all the main characters, good and evil, in the old spaghetti westerns are crack shots and rarely, if ever, miss. If they can see it, they can hit it. Edit: Perhaps I shouldn't say "good". Prior to the spaghetti westerns, all westerns clearly had good guys and bad guys. Often, you could tell who was who by the color of their hats. The spaghettis made popular the notion of the "anti-hero" to the western genre.

Controlling individual members of the squad in a turn based game, all the way down to the weapons they carry can be fun, if the game is done properly and the scale is small enough. Think X-Com, but set in WW2. Each individual has a certain number of "action points" that they can use to perform actions (move, fire a weapon, kneel, go prone, etc.) during your turn. If you end your turn with enough action points left over, a soldier could take a shot of opportunity during your opponents turn. This is the type of gameplay in the 101st Airborne game that I linked earlier in this thread. The one thing I sorta remember about the game was that there was a lot of moving around the map searching for enemies. It was very slow paced and caused the game to drag. X-Com (the original) perfected this type of play, without the boring wandering around the map with nothing going on. The new X-Com that came out a year or so ago is also quite excellent.

Yep, don't forget to run the activate modules short cut which should be on your desktop.

@Steve I read that whole 38 studios article. Very sad. Curt clearly had no idea how to run a company. I just checked and it looks like MMP is still in business and still selling ASL products. Not sure what Curt's relationship with them is now.

The reason I'm playing CM now is because I did an internet search for "computer ASL" when CMBO was in development. :-) Any of you guys still play ASL? I sold all my collection about five years ago. I had a whole bookshelf full of stuff and I got something like $1500 for it on ebay. Could have made more money if I had parted it out, but I couldn't be bothered. Strange thing was, I never even used most of it. I was, at best, a novice and could only play the most basic scenarios. The rule book was as thick as a NYC phone directory. I actually liked the original SL better than ASL, and could play it with some skill. I hear there is a "Starter Set" now with simplified rules.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcMk85ZsBh0 Click on the link.

For a Few Dollars More.....final