c3k

I don't open the editor before I enter a battle. I -could- do that, I suppose. I'd hate to see something that removes the FoW. I just never know which battle will have a last-turn cliffhanger which I want to see resolved. So, I'd have to open the editor EVERY SINGLE TIME I want to play. Not gonna happen. It would be nice to have a "extend battle" option. Let the player continue and see if the endgame conditions change significantly. (Obviously, any score would be bogus.) But, like some of the examples show, it would be nice to see how that Tiger ambush played out, or whether that RPG frozen in midflight at game end would hit my AAV filled with Marines. Or, whatever. I guess, not being a programmer and all, it would be added to the endgame AAR screen. "C3k Total Victory (with horrendous casualties, of course)", and there, at the bottom, "Continue to destroy your broken and fleeing enemy?" If you click "DESTROY THEM ALL" you go right back in with a time added. How long? Selectable by the player or a preset (and repeatable) time? So, say it's 15 minutes. After an extra 15 minutes you get the endgame screen again, you can reselect the extension? Shrug. That's getting down in the weeds. I'd still vote "yes" for the ability to extend, regardless of the implementation.

^^^ This. I'm reading up on the 9PD engagements from 22-27 December. I don't (yet) see any loss of 15 tanks (and more from other than the one gun) anywhere. Of course, the narratives are more broad than I'd like, however, I don't see any horrendous results like this thus far.

Installing. If you have a valid code, if nothing else just contact Tech Support. Get the Master Installer. Use your code to unlock the portion of the Master Installer you've purchased access to. (Copy the Master Installer to a thumbdrive. Copy your code(s) to a text file. Stick THAT on the thumbdrive, too. Now you've got a mobile CM library.)

I once called tech support for that stuff to a number...in Redmond, Washington. I thought I could improve my code. Instead, the guy asked me to tell him what -I- had done to get such a good config.sys/autexec.bat memory setup. I wonder if Gates feels he owes me royalties??? Good ol' floppies. Those little 3 1/2 disks were the cat's meow. Pretty much high tech, right there.

LOL... Got some responses, huh? Arty: blind firing can be done by planning it at the beginning of the battle. There are some limits, timing-wise, but you can plot artillery ANYWHERE on the map on turn 1. Lots of reasons for this and they are addressed in the links that others have provided. Great reading. LOS: like they said. You've got to estimate a lot, but you can always drag a waypoint "there" and draw a target line from it and see what's up. Then, delete the waypoint. (FWIW, a lot of folks would like a better LOS tool. There's a lot of reasons, technical and game-design, to argue against that.)

Don't I feel funny, what with the 35mm instamatic I have setup on a tripod near my computer with a handheld remote to trigger the shutter when something cool happens in-game.

Official accreditation is a bit of a loose term. The process involved could just be that someone other than the gun crew verified their claims. Like the sergeant who joined them and directed their fire, then, after half the men were machine-gunned, or maimed by HE fire, simply acknowledged that they stood and fought by signing the report...or told the tale to an officer. Or, a forensics team meticulously examined all German strength return reports, verified losses by checking factory serial numbers to hull carcasses, measured and scoped various penetrations of tanks on the battlefield, sighted back along the holes to the atg position, verified that the atg shot was the one that destroyed the tank. And did this for all weapons and destroyed afvs on the battlefield. There is a wide gulf between these two extremes. For an example of how these reports should be approached, read the two Swordfish Press books about Market-Garden or any of the Leaping Horseman Publishers books on armor near Stalingrad. Every vehicle entering the battlespace is accounted for and their fates are meticulously documented. From this type of research it becomes clear that battlefield claims frequently only approximate what happened. I have that Zaloga book. I’ll read that claim and then I’ll see if 9PD showed a loss of 15 (or more) tanks in that area. If I can dig that up. I don’t doubt that the atg did have a significant impact on that battle. I am skeptical that it destroyed 15 tanks.

This. As a Beta tester, I cannot tell you how many times I've installed/uninstalled/put an old version on/gotten a new version up/etc. Having the install files on a thumbdrive and a single, master, text document with all my activation codes has been a great solution.

Remember, too, the TacAI will prioritize a flamethrower team as a target. If they get spotted, a lot of guys are going to try to kill those SOBs.

Schrullenhaft, Your voluntary contributions to resolving software issues continue to amaze me. Your presence on this forum is quite the boon to the vast majority of us who don't have a fraction of your deep operating systems knowledge. Whether that contribution is recognized by those to whom your services are offered is a moot point. The rest of us recognize what you do and applaud you for it. Thanks.

There's a lot that could go into this. Let's look at an Abrams with TUSK. Beauty, heh? TC has a .50 and the loader has an M240. Should they both be up? If both, then the TC loses the hunter/killer benefit of the dual targeting systems...and the blue force tracker. If just the loader, then we lose the beauty that's the .50. If the "light" weapon is a RWS, then should the TC pop up and reload it automatically? What if he's surrounded by hajis with AK47s? How does the logic suss that out? What if he's in a crowded urban environment with unspotted enemies. It'd be crazy to reload, even with no known enemy. These are quick, dirty, and shallow examples. I'm only doing this to show that there is no easy answer. If you go with the "every hatch on every vehicle should be individually controlled by the player" solution, then what about the AI? Can't hamstring the AI or the TacAI, can we? (Any more than it already is, by its very nature.) Just something to think about.

Years ago, a hue and cry was raised within the various sturmartillerie and panzer units due to the deaths of so many crewmen. The Allied armies faced a similar issue. It seems that the men were popping up to shoot their machineguns...and getting killed. The numbers were too great to ignore. Top level coordination took place at the secret conference in...Davos. Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Halder (Hitler refused to leave his bunker, thinking it was a plot) all agreed to change how their armored ("armoured" on Churchill's copy of the final document) troops behaved. From then on, they would firmly stay buttoned up unless ordered not to. There is NO difference to your troops as to WHO gives the Target Light order. Sometimes it is the heavy hand of the player, sometimes it is the deft touch of the TacAI. If the TacAI wants a unit to Target Light, under the old protocol, they'd pop up, Target Light...and get brained by the enemy. That no longer occurs.

A work-around for the map damage: - Use pre-made slices, showing the "advance". - Each pre-made slice would have editor-introduced damage. This would replicate pre-battle artillery. - Keep in-battle, on-call (going on a hyphen tear) artillery to a small enough caliber that not too much destruction would occur. This would be workable because no troops would be close to heavy artillery barrages. Hence, this would occur before the troops moved up for the attack. The smaller on-call artillery would be more likely to be used by troops in-contact. It's not like a company commander could call down 300mm rockets. That would be pre-planned. Just a few thoughts. Of course, being able to import damaged maps from previous battles would be soooo much better.

Yeah, a great one. That'd be pretty sweet.

Agreed: this looks fantastic! If you're just doing this 30 minutes at a time with a cup of coffee, you need to start brewing more often.

A lot of good info. I'm going through the Zaloga Sherman book as I type. Gotta double-check all the "pintle welded to roof" vs. "pintle on a rotating ring" assumptions. Sigh.

Nice pix. I'm familiar with the rotating ring. I'm just not sure when they were introduced and on which models. I don't think it was prevalent in WWII. Those casting numbers on the turrets are helpful...but getting timestamps on the photos would be better. Certainly this is something worth digging into.

The replenishment occurs with one "weapon load" at a time.

The +rep to #post ratio is high with this one. Welcome to the world of CM.

Agreed. (There's a pix or two floating around showing exactly that. Posted recently.) The spotting rounds should not have allowed this to occur. What type of mission was it? Emergency has poor accuracy, for example, but still rains down.

Looks bad. Does the spotter have LOS to his target and/or to the area they're impacting? Being pinned, rattled, and green and without radio comms all don't help. (No radio in the equipment panel, but a radio command icon in the "in command" panel. Hmm.)

That was a GREAT ONE! Especially when the ghostly Stuart had a sabre duel with the German ghost guy...and saved the US tank guys.

Agreed: I'm having difficulty finding any WWII Shermans with pintle mounted .50s which could be rotated around to the front of the cupola. Every one I've seen has the pintle welded to the turret top...behind the cupola.

.50 cal AA mounts which are behind the TC hatch can be tough to use. I forget what parameters need to be met to have them fire. A quick test would be to open up the hatch, and reverse towards the enemy.

The logic used for Target/Target Light is that Target uses all available weapons; Target Light only uses non-main weapon. (This is for vehicles.) So, if the main weapon is destroyed...the NEXT weapon moves up. Sigh. In this case it's the Bow Machine Gun. So, since there are no non-main weapons, there is no Target Light command. Don't ask me why.