gunnergoz

I love vehicle interiors, used to model them into my plastic models if they didn't already come with one. If I didn't have photos, I'd make something up that at least looked feasible. Now you guys have gone and put them into 3-D models where 99% of game design studios would have happily ignored them. I'm pleased as punch! One more "gold star" for the BFC gang!

You'd think someone's life depended upon the answer. "Everyone stand clear - I'm waiting for an answer from the oracle!"

I have seen two nice videos of the real thing in action but they are from a commercial site selling videos so I cannot post them here. I simply googled "Cullin hedgerow cutter video." The first video shows ordnance troops building and installing the cutters on an M-4 and then the M-4 busting through a hedgerow with it. The second video starts with artillery but quickly switches to an M-5 light with the Cullins cutter trying its hand at a hedgerow. The much lighter M-5 clearly has its work cut out for it compared to the Sherman.

What akd said. beat me to the punch and with many fewer words.

There was a reason that Sgt Cullin came up with his Rhino cutters - the tanks by themselves were found to be relatively unable to cut a path or traverse through bocage without risk. But with the cutters welded on the front of the tank even an M-5 light could reliably clear a path for itself by slicing down the bocage growth at the level of the cutters. Interestingly, most of the scrap iron that these cutters were made of, came from Rommel's beach defenses a couple of miles away. Good use of available material!

I too have had similar issues. In the scenario at the command post/crossroads one mortar team seemed to never be in contact no matter where I put it or the platoon CO, so I finally ended up using it in direct fire. In that event it managed to knock out two armored cars by spooking their crews and forcing them to dismount and be cut up before the mortar itself getting clobbered by one of the other A/C's.

The 60's had a reputation of being dead on accurate in line of sight shooting, given a well trained and experienced crew. One thing I wonder about though - is wind tracked in the game? I know that small mortars in particular are susceptible to crosswinds and that can badly affect accuracy. BTW I too had a mortar crew engage in a direct fire engagement with German infantry near the command post in that scenario. They killed some, but the infantry (about 100 yards away or so) finally did knock out the mortar crew by disabling 2 and killing one.

All I can add to this is that, in the tutorial scenario, I had a Sherman take out the AT gun over by the crossroads in about 5 shots, while the AT gun fired several shots at the tank, the closest of which bounced off the road wheels. I've also played another scenario at the command post and saw a mix of results - I can't really say I have enough information to go by yet to make generalizations from this, and other, limited observations with the demo.

When my dad was in the "old Army" they had weekly contests for the 60mm mortarmen to see who could come closest to dropping a solid "teardrop" round into a drum or barrel set upright in the target area. This was all line of sight, of course, but since the winners usually got free beers at the enlisted mens club that night it might explain why so many mortar crews became uncannily accurate with the darn things.

I'm with you on that one "Electronics" has been around as a word in use since the 1930's at least.

Some nice photos here: http://www.armyradio.com/arsc/customer/home.php?cat=71 When I was a kid my Army sergeant dad would bring home all sorts of neat things for me to keep as souvenirs and two I had for a long time were wooden felt-lined spare radio tube carriers that held 20-30 tubes of various sizes in them. Apparently, the tubes were breaking all the time and the vehicle radios in particular took a beating while in motion, let alone being subjected to impact shocks in an AFV.

I have to say that the 60mm mortar in the demo tutorial worked very well in the anti-personnel role, slaughtering Germans who were clustered behind the rock wall by the crossroads. Of course, they were pinned by MG fire and if they got up to run, they were chopped up, but the mortars finished them off to a man. I did not have much chance to try them on the AT gun, since the Sherman's 75's did it in from the hedgerow gap near the farmhouse. The AT gun never did much except temporarily damage a road wheel on the Sherman and it was still maneuvering afterwards.

It is definitely a more challenging game than the first iteration. You have to watch your armor closely and see what is out there before blundering blindly forward. I lost 3 Shermans to German Marder III's before I could knock them out. The Marder's AI was smart in one case, staying hull down and hiding, but the other two charged out into the open like miniature Tiger tanks and got cut down for their trouble. They still got 3 Shermans before I could react to their appearance, though...a lot can happen in 60 seconds and I like the loss of control that turn-based gives me, it ads a sense of powerlessness that must be very common in the real life battlefield.

While playing the demo as the US at the crossroads, I experimented a little with the one mortar section that never seemed to be in command contact and put it out where it could direct fire. Much to my surprise, when the German armored cars showed up, the mortar knocked out 2 of the 4 with multiple hits on their rear deck and wheels. I was hoping to see one drop into the turret, but no luck...while the turrets on the real ones had heavy steel mesh anti-grenade screens on them, I think a mortar round exploding on contact with one would make mincemeat of the vehicle's interior and occupants. Of course, the mortar crew paid the price - 2 WIA and 1 KIA but hey, they did the job!

My experience with NVidia has been more positive than with ATI as well. I have seldom had issues with them the way I have with ATI cards. The ATI's are often cheaper, but not as reliable IMHO and have spotty performance in some games. I'm talking desktops but my laptop also has an NVidia 8800M GTS GPU and 512 MB dedicated video RAM and plays the demo just fine. If you have to go with a laptop, be sure it has a dedicated graphics GPU and RAM.

A choice would be nice but I like the one-minute turns...30 seconds might be OK, I'd have to try them but, offhand, I suspect I'd feel like the game was taking too long to progress.

Yep, older tanks were not insulated from shock the way today's are. You hit an old one smartly with a big shell, even one that does not penetrate, and the noise could definitely get the crew's attention and the shock wave propagated through all the metal components could really break up tube-type electronics, among other things. Optics are sometimes rubber mounted for shock insulation, but not always in these early beasts.

As you no doubt read from a couple of other posters, the answer is something like "not the way it is now." You may benefit from a couple more Gigs of RAM and a separate video card with at least 512 MB of video RAM, like was suggested. If you do those things, be sure you install the latest sound and of course video drivers. The drivers that come with the video card may not be the latest, so even after you install from the CD that comes with the card, check the game demo again...if it has graphics glitches, look for newer drivers for the card. I have yet to buy a video card that came with the latest drivers, and they make a big difference. Good luck and let us know how it turns out.

What are your system specs? Do you have enough system RAM and HD space? Your description of the problem sounds like your PC is seriously bogged down by something: have a lot of other things running at the same time? Antivirus/antimalware? And are your video drivers current? Those are the usual suspects in my experience. Wishing you good luck...

Is that "fact" from the "Guardian" too? This is from their official site: http://www.iaea.org/ Doesn't sound like a bunch of non-scientific tree-huggers to me.

The "brown" was due to the fact that they were sometimes wearing the OD wool combat pants with the M-1943 field jacket, which was a darker, greener shade of OD. It was also made from cotton, giving it a different texture and look from the wool pants, even in monochrome photos of the era. When the M-1943 jacket is worn with the pants it was designed to be worn with, the look is much like what you see in the game. Soldiers in mid-war wore mix and match depending upon what was available and later in the war you saw less and less of the wool uniform.

I normally hate it when my wife leaves by herself to go to Ukraine to visit family, but this time when she leaves on Monday, there will be at least one partial compensation...hopefully the full game comes out before she gets back!

52 deaths? By whose reckoning? These folks disagree with your source: http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernobyl/chernobyl.pdf And the death toll was only the start of the horror: http://mediastorm.com/publication/chernobyl-legacy Mind you, I'm all for any rational, relatively safe and sane power source, including fusion if and when we ever get there. But to deliberately downplay an existing disaster to justify potentially reckless activity in the future, is just plain crazy. And yes, every nuclear reactor plan begins in the premise that safety is the first concern, but once you get politics, corporations and lobbies involved in the process, the actual safety issues usually take a back seat to profits and election sound bites.

I play turn based but am all over as well. I like going in close to see what the troops see and with suspension of disbelief, pretend if I was there - what would I do? But all the deciding about what to do next comes after I see the overall picture. After all, pixeltruppen are not that clever and I have to play the role of their individual intelligence, so to speak. I just think of myself as an omniscient commander!

US experience in WW2 was something in the order of 3 wounded per 1 killed, but that is a statistical average that could vary greatly due to individual circumstances. My one Tutorial US win to date had 5 US KIA and 16 WIA, but the Germans had 47 KIA and 28 WIA with 7 more missing. But I really hit them hard with mortars in the open so I would think that fact, plus their abysmal morale, would account for greater German casualties (panicking while pinned then getting over-run or hit by mortars, etc.) And it is a game, we push the pixeltruppen hard and the AI probably does too. If the game allowed for truly realistic "breaking point" behavior and for realistic individual cases of cowardice/fright/ineptitude, we as players would probably scream our heads off when the pixeltruppen failed to do what we wanted them to do. At the same time, if our experience with the released game shows this to be a consistent problem of high KIA/WIA ratios, then there just might be an issue with the formulas that determine who is lightly wounded, who is seriously wounded and who dies outright.