gunnergoz

I'm considering a move to a 1 ghz+ T-bird but the critical issue is how CM works with it, of course! Anyone with first hand experience? If so, please describe your system a bit also. Many thanks

I'm still fussing endlessly over terrain mods. The following are the bocage, brush and marsh mods I like best to date. The brush is derived from Juju's excellent tree bases. The marsh owes it's palette to Tiger's marsh but looks a bit different. The bocage had inspiration in some of Sgt. Steiner's work. As you can tell, I'm a modding slut and use what works best as a basis for my designs! Many, many thanks to the original designers for your inspirations and the fun I've had playing with them! First, general bocage terrain: Next, a bit closer up in the hedgerows. Troops become very hard to see indeed: My caption: "I'll bet I can pee in the water from here, can you?" And for those whom I've failed entirely and so cannot tell what's what: If theres sufficient interest, I'll try to post these at a CM site. Thanks for checking them out and if they please you, great!

I have to say that this is a uniquely American viewpoint, that children "naturally start thinking about sex and violence at an early age." The fact is, they do so because we teach them to. Then we wonder why our country is drowning in sex and violence. I was able to spend a few days in Ukraine visiting my wife's family a year ago. I work with delinquents for a living, so I know a bit about kids. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Ukrainian kids are free of the "dragging lower lip syndrome" of our pouty, oversexed, hyperviolent little charmers in the good ol' US of A. Ukrainian kids grow up materially poor but rich in family life, love and sheltering. They do not revel in sex and violence, but look instead to work to please and serve their families. They are innocents compared to our little sophisticated, spoiled and self-centered tykes. Yeah, they'd get eaten alive if they came over here, but that's OK because they can always go out and buy a gun, right? OK, so maybe their country, economy and government suck, but the fact is that they are happy and well-adjusted. That was a meaningful discovery for me, after years of thinking that the species was going to hell in a handbasket. It turns out to be true only because that's what our media want us to believe is inevitable for us and we suckers believe it. I only mention this because I sometimes have to remind myself that we Americans don't have all the answers, nor is the best way necessarily our way. And finally, our problems are not universally shared by others.

You see, it's simple... CM gamers have "I.Q.'s" RTS gamers just have the "I" part. (Runs for bunker and prepares for the inevitable).

Vveeerrrrry Sexxxxyyyyy! Nice job, Mike, thanks!

Take heart, there are recovery and 12-steps groups for the likes of you. Have you considered selling your blood, instead?

I sort of know what you mean, I tinker with terrain mods and find myself spending more time fussing over them than over battles. Then the mood changes and my wife can't tear me away from the game... Take a break, Tiger, and come back refreshed and inspired anew. We'll be here.

My readings about war and WW2 in particular have taught me many things, not the least of which is truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Very odd, unusual and even incredible occurances happen in war. Here's one example. In a previous thread I mentioned Dmitry Loza's book of East Front war recollections. Loza describes in one chapter how a unit of Russian tankers in Matilda tanks ran out of HE ammo while in pursuit of German infantry. The Germans, emboldened by the lack of fire from the following Russian tanks, got several hundred meters ahead of the tanks and proceeded to drop their drawers and "mooned" the Russkies to show their contempt. The Red Army tankers were ordered to conserve ammo and so did nothing for some time as the pursuit ground on and the tanks strove to stay out of panzerfaust range. Finally, the Russian C.O. could take the humiliation of constant "mooning" Germans and so ordered his gunner to fire one AP solid shot round at the retreating infantry. The 2-Pounder round hit one of offending "mooners" square on and disintegrated him with body parts flying all over. Needless to say, the remaining Germans fled faster than ever and never again tempted fate while still in sight of their Russian pursuers. A strange but apparently true story. CM duplicates this type of oddball occurrances in it's own unique way, whether intentional or not. Most CM gamers have their own unique war stories gained from close observation of events in the game. I think this is a quaint and endearing aspect of this gem of a game, one that make it stand out from the graphic spreadsheet games exemplified by Steel Panthers, etc. So I, for one, enjoy the oddball events in that spirit.

Does anyone know if there is a randomizer or seed generator used in CM? Just curious.

Yawwnnn... [This message has been edited by gunnergoz (edited 03-14-2001).]

My sense is that for many games, but especially for CM, it matters first, how much RAM you have, second, how much Video RAM, third, how much free disk space (for Virtual RAM) and fourth, the speed of your CPU and Video board respectively. I'd appreciate hearing about how others may perceive this. My PC upgrade priorities have always followed this sequence and I've enjoyed good luck with the combinations derived from it. Currently I'm running a homemade P-II at 400 mhz, 256 MB RAM, a Matrox Millenium 400 Max with 32 mb, and two 10 Gig HD's with about 25% free space on each. I'm able to load up the largest CM maps with full hi-res mods (anyone who's got my speckled grass and bases installed knows how much they take to run!) for terrain and vehicles. The maps scroll very smoothly, with no delays or hiccups. Of course, with my older, slower processor, the AI takes forever to come up with its turns and then to calculate the outcome. The movies, once generated, are run at full frame rates however. I mention all this just to give a baseline for others to describe their systems and personal experience. My advice to those upgrading on a budget would be to purchase more RAM first, then look into a newer video card with as much Video RAM as they can afford. BTW, my next upgrades will be the following and in this order: - AMD 1.1 or 1.2 mhz T-Bird with a good motherboard (more research required on the board) - 256 MB of appropriate RAM - New video card (64 MB VRAM) (manufacturer still TBD based upon research) - New HD of at least 60 gb. I figure this combination should run CM 2 and possibly CM II (or whatever it'll be called,) quite well. That's my target, anyway!

Here's the publisher's URL: http://www.wingssimulations.com/ I tinkered with Panzer Elite and found it to have much promise. However, I'm not that much into simulations of individual vehicles, as much as I am of units at the CM scale or larger.

I'm no expert, but I get the impression that the tendency to slavishly adhere to established army doctrine lasts until the more rigid officers who insist upon it are killed off by a gleeful enemy or are fragged by their own humorless surviving troops. First-hand exerience on the battlefield seems to be the best teacher of proper "doctrine" and next to that, having new troops inculcated by recent veterans is second best. "School solutions" may be fine in principle, and perhaps even can force one to think in desired patterns, but once there is contact with the enemy, it is the guy who thinks fastest and gets inside the enemy's decision loop, who wins. US troops in WW2 were admired by their opponents precisely because they learned their lessons on the battlefield and adapted to circumstances faster than the enemy. When generals and colonels insist upon some canned approach to the battlefield, soldiers quickly find the weaknesses in it and pay with their lives. Those soldiers who live on to fight another day, figure out ways to outfox the enemy without necessarily dying in the process. This process is dynamic and must reflect the current realities of that era's battlefields, i.e. soldiers must adapt to their own and the enemy's weapons and equipment, factors which greatly vary over time. The rest is a matter of figuring out how to personally survive on the battlefield as long as one can, with leaders also striving to suffer as few friendly casualties as possible, while attempting to meet mission objectives. Generals who lead from up front (Rommel for instance) are far more likely to adapt sucessfully on the battlefield by watching learning and acting upon new information. Generals who Hunker in the Bunker (Lucas at Anzio) will never have enough situational awareness to maximize their effectiveness against the enemy. Surviving veterans are probably the "gameyest" people you'll ever meet because the probably tried whatever it took to get through their war. The fact that they lived, tells us that they did something right, or that they were very lucky, or probably (and most likely) both.

For those interested in the Eastern Front, I've been reading, and highly suggest, Dmitry Loza's Fighting for the Soviet Motherland: Recollections from the Eastern Front. As the title says, it is a collection of anecdotes from veterans. In the first few chapters it makes some interesting references, here's just a couple: - Loss of raw materials forced production of T-34's with poorly cast armor (absent key metal alloys), with result of greatly increased crew injuries due to spalling even when there was no penetration. Shermans and Matildas were admired for the homogeneity of their armor. - Sherman and Matilda crews faced a great deal of risk from friendly fire as many other Russian units were unfamiliar with their profiles. - Matilda's developed a bad reputation for bogging as their suspension was not optimal in the dense soil and twiggy terrain of Russia. Every 4-5 kilometers the crews dismounted to clean out the suspension. Even I knew in principle of these things probably happening, but it's the first time I've come accross direct references by veterans to these facts. It's easy to see how such little factoids could be integrated in to the formulae for crew injuries in non-penetrating hits, odds of friendly fire occurring against certain vehicles or in the bogging odds calculations. I'm really enjoying this book and recommend it highly. I expect to find a few more gems in it and perhaps BTS's programmers will find it useful as well.

I'm sure this has been discussed but a search yielded me too much ground to cover to find the answer to my question. I'd like to know if there are engine or gameplay tweaks in CM2, will they be migrated to CMBO via a patch?

Without starting up what's obviously been thrashed over before, I did think it interesting that the WW2 history of the US 2nd Armored Division mentions use of canister by the M-5A1 light tanks on a frequent basis against German infantry and crew-served weapons. Since the light tanks were often utilized to escort the armored infantry half-tracks (mostly when German tank presence was known to be minimal), they used the canister to good effect suppressing the enemy anti-infantry support weapons while the GI's took on the AT weapons that threatened the lights. While it might be tough to simulate the use of canister, it would be worth doing based upon what I've read about its actual use in action in the ETO.

The first US tanks to mix it up in Korea were M-24's. Not the tank to go chasing after the likes of T-34/85's in 1944, when they first came out, any more than in 1950 when the "police action" happened. We had the armor in inventory to handle the T-34/85's, i.e. the M-26/M-46 and soon the M-47 series, but they were not present. So the failure was one of policy and employment, not technology. See'in it on TV don't necessarily make it so...But TV don't sell well without scandal and scapegoat.

Juju recently contacted me privately about this matter and as a result, I discovered that his tree base tiles #647-652 were the underlying basis for my similarly numbered tree base mods, as posted on The Last Defense and on CultureK's CM site. I have in the past credited other's work in the origin of my own mods (e.g. Big DD's terrain is the inspiration for my speckled grass and is so credited) but in the case of this particular tree base mod, I honestly lost track of the original work and it's creator, that I'd modded to its present form. As it was, once I'd received Juju's email, it took me quite a while to scour my hard disk before I tracked down the original zip file with Juju's bases on it, so I could see with my own eyes just what the heck he was referring to. What I know now is that, in my zeal to mod and mod and mod, I'd overwritten the uncompressed files for his bases with the result that I could not later identify their origin or creator. A brain fart, as the saying goes, for which I'm sorry. Having read the other posts in this topic, I must say that I agree that civility is a desireable trait in our little community. As far as I'm concerned, being honest by giving credit where it's due is also part of that expectation. And to be blunt, it's simply the right thing to do. The Golden Rule and all that icky stuff, you know... Thank you, Juju, for your civil handling of my little snafu: I personally appreciate your tact and think you're a pretty class act. Ed "gunnergoz"

Tiger, Go to this site for a good free translator: http://www.translate.ru/eng/erre.asp It probably helps if you have the Russian language module installed in windows. If all else fails, my Ukrainian wife may be of assistance.

Here's the latest and probably final brush and marsh mods to go with my terrain series. I'll upload them to The Last Defense soon. Hope you enjoy them and that they enhance your CM experience! Next project: roads and trails.

Manx, thanks for all your work on one of my favorite sites. Good luck. Let your fans know what, if anything, they can do to help.

There are literally dozens of mods out there, variations upon variations. Who would decide what went into your mega-mod pack? And would you have the means to download something which might run into dozens (if not hundreds) of megabites if it were truly comprehensive? You'll find that most modders prefer to tailor and trim their mods to suit their tastes. If someone were to try to launch a mega-mod, there' probably be a hue and cry to change this or alter that and soon the originator would likely give up in disgust. Remember the old saw about pleasing all of the people all of the time? CM players are real mavericks and I seriously doubt anyone would go for such a scheme. Just surrender...you've been asssimilated

Earlier this AM, I was reading Hans Von Luck's book Panzer Commander. He was C.O. of Pz Gr Rgt 125 of 21st Pz Div and he comments about how Hitler slept in because he worked into the wee hours. Clearly, the "toadies" in the Fuhrer's entourage didn't dare wake him early, invasion or no. One didn't want to mess with the Fuhrer, not if you wanted to keep your head. Meanwhile, the entire German chain of command is literally paralyzed while the invasion is getting hold of Norman soil. Hitler had them pretty well buffaloed, all right, primarily by implementing a command system that maximized his control and minimized the influence of the generals, whom he deeply mistrusted. It's not theory or myth, it was the reality of living in a tyrannical regime where your life could be forfeit based upon on one man's whim or mood.

Is this the right place to post my mod for the high-res winter upper-right clevis pin bracket for the mid war M-4.5 Lee-Grant-Finkmeister battle car assault cannon launcher system?

What's interesting is that when you try to access Manx's URL, it switches automatically to http://www.combat-missions.net:81/.cobalt/error/forbidden.html