Christian Knudsen

I am having a slight problem, and do not know if this is a design feature, or possible bug, or what... I cannot assault as a secondary waypoint. For example, in an attack on a lone building 100 meters from my squad, I wish to have my squad advance for about the first 75 meters, and then assault over the last 25 meters. Even with a rested, OK, veteran squad under +2 command I cannot do this. This means that I have to either advance the entire 100m, which is not ideal, or assault the entire 100m, which again is not ideal, or using pauses, time it so that the turn ends with the squad at about the right point, and then change to assault orders, which neccessitates a pause, usually out in the open... Any advice/guidance? Thanks in advance.

Designing my own Rxd Bxxrcades operation - still testing, but working well so far - and seeing a Full German Rifle Coy with a platoon of MG42s, 105 mm prep bombardment, 81 mm smoke mission, and three StUG IIIs in support still get just about blown away while taking out the Soviet rifle platoon and Maxim MG resident in the building... You start to get a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny sense of just a bit of what went on in the fall and winter of 1942. Very scary.

Thanks guys. Actually I will take this opportunity to jack myself up a little bit, as I realized after posting that maybe I should search and see if anyone had asked this question before - Lo and behold... D'oh.

I am trying to create a custom map based on a map of a certain factory complex... So far, all goes well, but I cannot figure out how to create damage levels on custom-made maps. Obviously rubble can be used, but how does one crater/shellhole a custom map? Surely there is some sort of mechanism for this. This is my first time making a custom map - ambitious, I agree - so hopefully I have not missed something really simple and obvious...

Sadly no... I actually proposed a similar plan, but it was vetoed pretty quickly by my wife. Damn you Chad, for your foresight. I bow to your superior intellect, etc. In a further update, I had to blow $30 today to buy a hard-to-find copy of my Regimental History today, so CMBB takes another hit.

#$%(&**%$%^!!! So I, along with everybody else, have been looking forward to CMBB for a good while now. A few weeks ago, however, this changed. I began to wish that - that - that BTS would release a sub-par product. :eek: This requires some explanation. You see, I am broke. Flat, stinking broke. And I have a seven-month old who is surprisingly hard on the old solvency. Hence my desire to not need to buy CMBB. If it was not so good, I could get my daughter more stuff, like food, et al. It was selfish, I know, but there you go. So yesterday I downloaded the demo, with nothing but sadness in my heart. Either way I'm screwed. The game is either really good, in which case I'm forced to wait, or it's not, in which case I am deprived of the East Front tactical game I've been waiting for ever since I cracked the box on Beyond Valor lo these many years ago. So anyways, the demo is, of course, really, really great. And the full version promises to be even better. And then the mods... Oh to hell with it, I'll starve myself for a while... So when can I preorder?

Hi Michael. In regards to your first point, I would direct you to "Command or Control? Command, Training, and Tactics in the British and German Armies, 1888-1918", by Martin Samuels (London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1995). This book contains an excellent discussion of the concept of the General staff as it evolved along with the doctine of directive command. The major function of the General Staff as a body seems to have been to have produced a body of advisory officers (A large percentage of which went on to senior command) who had a common doctrine and would, when given a tactical/operational situation, come to the same basic conclusion as the vast majority of their peers. This allowed the Chief of the General Staff, who after von Moltke was basically the operational head of the army, to be confident that his subordinate units would basically react to the situations in which they were placed in the way that he himself would have, which was presumably the correct response. Basically then it was first and foremost a tool for ensuring the effectiveness of the decentralized command neccessitated by the size and scale of late 19th and 20th century warfare. As for your second point regarding the fate of the General Staff as a body in WWII, one must IMHO seek to differentiate the politics of the OKW/OKH from the body of General Staff officers. Hitler was not, however, a believer in the sort of reliance on one's subordinates that is at the core of the General Staff system as Samuels describes it. Therefore the constant micromanagement from OKW/OKH would certainly have curtailed the effectiveness of the General Staff advisory system. As for Dupuy, I believe (with a certain amount of sticking out of my neck - please be kind) that he tends to confuse (gulp) the General Staff as an advisory body with the OKW/OKH as a command body, seeing as sort of Joint Chiefs concept. In this sense, then, I would see it as incorrect to refer to the OKW/OKH as the German General Staff. Hope this helps more than it confuses, Christian

Hi Michael. In regards to your first point, I would direct you to "Command or Control? Command, Training, and Tactics in the British and German Armies, 1888-1918", by Martin Samuels (London: Frank Cass and Co., Ltd., 1995). This book contains an excellent discussion of the concept of the General staff as it evolved along with the doctine of directive command. The major function of the General Staff as a body seems to have been to have produced a body of advisory officers (A large percentage of which went on to senior command) who had a common doctrine and would, when given a tactical/operational situation, come to the same basic conclusion as the vast majority of their peers. This allowed the Chief of the General Staff, who after von Moltke was basically the operational head of the army, to be confident that his subordinate units would basically react to the situations in which they were placed in the way that he himself would have, which was presumably the correct response. Basically then it was first and foremost a tool for ensuring the effectiveness of the decentralized command neccessitated by the size and scale of late 19th and 20th century warfare. As for your second point regarding the fate of the General Staff as a body in WWII, one must IMHO seek to differentiate the politics of the OKW/OKH from the body of General Staff officers. Hitler was not, however, a believer in the sort of reliance on one's subordinates that is at the core of the General Staff system as Samuels describes it. Therefore the constant micromanagement from OKW/OKH would certainly have curtailed the effectiveness of the General Staff advisory system. As for Dupuy, I believe (with a certain amount of sticking out of my neck - please be kind) that he tends to confuse (gulp) the General Staff as an advisory body with the OKW/OKH as a command body, seeing as sort of Joint Chiefs concept. In this sense, then, I would see it as incorrect to refer to the OKW/OKH as the German General Staff. Hope this helps more than it confuses, Christian

RRR, actually. Sorry, I just couln't resist a dig. After all, what fun is life if you can't have an occasional poke at another regiment. I guess this is what is known as the downside of the regimental system. As to the MBT vs IFV debate, I am surprised that noone has brought up the direction that the US Army seems to be moving, with, as I understand it, more emphasis on lighter vehicles such as the LAV III (although heavily modified). The debate in the States seems to follow (or precede) much of what we in Canada are talking about, with one signifivcant difference: The emphasis seems to be on a warfighting stance, with detractors claiming that a move to the "wheeled brigades" will lower combat effectiveness, and the supporters, of course, claiming the opposite. It seems to me that this it the only approach to take. While peacekeeping may seem to be less dangerous than more involved conflict, anyone who has been on one of the more "dire" tours that Canada has sent its troops on in the past will tell you that bullets were flying and people were dying, as the old phrase goes. If that has been the case, and will yet be again, as I at least am sure, then do we not as a nation owe it to these troops to give them the best chance to survive present and future conflicts? Part of this involves not only suvivability but offensive punch as well. The crux is this. As it stands, Canada is fairly well equipped to take on small scale peacekeeping missions such as the ones in Bosnia and Cyprus. The next few months will tell if this will be good enough to sustain 3VP as it goes where the potential for things to go really wrong is sizeable. Thank goodness that Canadian troops are so well trained...

IMHO, the Cdn Army suffers not so much from a lack of doctrine as a lack of defined role. Within the restrictions of this debate on role, I think that there are attempts to develop doctrine within the Army, and the fact that a discussion is taking place on the subject is of itself a good indicator. The fact remains that the Canadian Army has simply not been recently tested in such a manner as to reveal severe weaknesses in the current (and evolving) combat doctrines. Therefore the reliance on other, more tested doctrine. For instance, the similarities between Cdn. and Brit Infantry drills are pretty large, so far as I know. As to the lack of role and the whole war-fighting Trg and Equipment as opposed to peacekeeping needs, this is a debate which cannot be answered by the military, although they are the ones who have to deal with the results of this mainly political and public debate. I do agree with you Michael that watching Infantiers pepperpot about the place is painful to watch, but then watching the Cal Highrs do anything at all is pretty excruciating at the best of times. As for the Tease the Soldier Program, the kit we have been given is (mostly) pretty neat (ahhh, Goretex), but woe betide one that has his/her new kit damaged beyond repair. You would need pretty good luck indeed to get an exchange item, as there is not enough kit in the system. Still waiting on a lot of this kit, as well...

For a really great discussion of the firepower debate, and the various training methods used to "fix" the non-firing factor, read "On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society," by LCol. Dave Grossman (Little, Brown, and Co., Boston, 1995) ------------------ Cede Nullis - Yield to None

Don't get me wrong, I love CMBO, but there was still a bit more gravity to ASL. The hours spent doing force selection and setup for Red Barricades lent a bit of weight and solemnity to the whole thing, not to mention the days that could be spent actually playing the game. As well, CMBO doesn't give the opportunity to throw your dice across the room when your 10-3 defending in the Chemist's Shop rolls boxcars on his Heat of Battle die roll... ------------------ Cede Nullis - Yield to None

IMHO this was one of the best moments for me related to CM. I had been pretty much squirming waiting for the game to arrive, and the moment of shock when I saw that only the manual had been shipped was to say the least heartstopping. The elation upon then finding the CD was thus all the more intense. Wow, I thought, all this emotion and I haven't even begun to play yet... ------------------ Cede Nullis - Yield to None

I would tend to agree about Frontsoldaten; it is too dry and one tends to lose the feeling in the minutiae and the sheer volume of material (and the fact that as I recall the author leans disproportionally on a few sources). On the other hand, Frontsoldaten is one of the very few english language secondary sources that attempts to look at the German war on the individual and small group scale, as opposed to the volumes available on the larger picture(s)... ------------------ Cede Nullis - Yield to None

Yeah, my card does actually support the 8MB upgrade, but why spend the money to upgrade a card that - as you point out - is nearing the end of its service life. I have a very faint hope that Matrox will jimmy up a solution, but if that doesn't happen I guess I'll have to pony up. It's a shame really, as up until now I've been highly impressed both with Matrox and the G200 card, which with a little shoehorning has seen me thru everything up to this point. It is unfortunate that Matrox has turned away from the gaming market, as I would seriously consider buying another of their products if that were not the case. Still though, there is a nice looking Geforce 2 32MB card at a nearby store for only ~$170.00 Cdn... Thanks again Christian ------------------ Cede Nullis - Yield to None

Thanks Schrullenhaft, I had hoped this would not be the case... I am using all of the latest drivers and such, so I decided to try the Matrox support forum to see what they said. Unbelievably they seem to have not heard about Combat Mission at all, and seemed sort of interested in the problem. The tech guy's initial reaction was that it might be an issue with the G200 only having the 8MB VRAM, but I hope not. Thanks, Christian ------------------ Cede Nullis - Yield to None

Hello there! I am fast becoming a slave to Combat Mission, so kudos to Battlefront and to all those putting out the great mods and scenarios that are taking up so very much of my time. Well Done! To business. I run a Matrox Millennium G200 8MB 3d card on a Celeron 400. Sadly, there are major issues with transparency - I cannot use the transparent occupied buildings, nor the fancy smoke or fog settings. A major disappointment. I am using DirectX 8, and Matrox's latest drivers. Can someone please tell me if I need to buy a new 3d card, or if there is some arcane way to get around this problem. I am going to have a hard time explaining to my wife that I need to spend a couple of hundred bucks to get make improvements in one game. You can see my predicament. Thanks, and keep up the good work, Christian Knudsen