Vanir Ausf B

I asked a similar question a while back. Apparently, setup zones can be placed anywhere so there should be no technical reason it can't be done.

I've been toying with this same idea for a while now, but it sounds like you've actually done it. My thinking is that it would be ideal for meeting engagements, but may not be as well suited for attack/defend. What has your experience been?

Something thing we have in common.

I'm utterly confused. Ok, so this suggests that when a dead vehicle is between a friendly vehicle and an enemy vehicle they will have LoS and LoF to each other as long as the dead vehicle is not smoking. This says the exact opposite; that the dead vehicle will block LoF both ways (but not LoS absent smoke). Could somebody clarify? Also, I'm guessing that friendly non-dead vehicles do not block LoS or LoF but if someone could confirm that I'd appreciate it.

I mostly object to the accusation that ladder players are some form of egomaniac. I hate broad generalizations like that. Of course you run into your fair share of jerks, but that isn't the case for the majority of ladder players that I have met. You can look on any large ladder and find players who have played a lot of games but lose most of the time. If they are there looking for an ego boost it begs the question of why they keep coming back. As for learning the game mechanics, if you don't want to be bothered then I can understand not wanting to be in a competitive environment. But becoming a better player will help you all the time, including tournaments and unbalanced games. Speaking of which, kudos to you if you enjoy games where your opponent has a huge advantage. But I would venture to guess you're in the minority on that, and I don't mean among ladder players. I can see it having some appeal if you are playing a historical scenario where you can judge performance against history, but otherwise I don't see the point of it. The Nabla tournament is different as the advantaged side is played by the AI and your performance is compared to other players playing the same scenario.

That's how I see it. Infantry tactics in CM are largely about how to concentrate fire while minimizing concentration of your force. When I see a heavy concentration of enemy infantry I click on my spotter and get the countdown started. Armor is a different story, but I believe concentrating armor along a narrow front is realistic.

Given that you seem to be some sort of authority on the psychological makeup of various categories of Combat Mission players, perhaps you could explain to me the difference between people who play on ladders and people who enter into tournaments -- people such as yourself.

If you get a chance to look, what is the points allocation for "Huge" QBs?

The Allies having air superiority is historical. The Germans having no AA is not.

Hold on. The Bulge is a completely different game. Is there really no intention to have AA in CMBN at all?

If it won't get you in trouble to answer, I have a couple of questions about the QB maps and QBs in general. How big are the largest QB maps that ship with the game? I know the upper limit is 4km x 4km, but I'm curious about what is considered a "large" map in CMBN. Also -- not really a map question -- but what are the points limits for unit purchases in QBs? In CMx1 the limit was 5000 pts which could get you 2-3 battalions of infantry plus support. I'm curious what kind of scale you guys are shooting for.

Perhaps we can prove anything with the right report:

Pretty big, I imagine.

Apparently that is not entirely true AFAIK you only have to connect to the internet once, when you activate. After that you don't need a connection.

I've never used Steam, so I can't really comment on it. But yeah, there's probably a reason I've never used it

http://webandofbrothers.de/index.htm http://www.theblitz.org/

Rexford himself has said the IS-2's gun is a bit under-modeled in the game.

To all my future Axis opponents: FEAR ME!!!

Only 2 kinds of DRM bother me. 1. The kind that installs programs on your computer that run even when the game is not running. Starforce and some versions of SecureROM come to mind. 2. Ones that require a constant internet connection.

I remember some of those debates back in the day, IIRC mostly surrounding the use of 95mm HEAT by British Cromwell and Centaur CS tanks. I don't recall if there was ever any conclusion as to whether the weapon was incorrectly modeled. My guess is that if engagement ranges are as short in CMBM as they typically were in CMx1 the Sherman 105 will be a serious threat.

Someone long ago posted the reported unit strengths for German tanks on the Western front. The gist of it was that Panthers and Tigers were no less reliable than the PzIV. ... Looking through the CMBM unit list, one other option for the American player would be the 105mm armed Shermans. They do carry HEAT rounds and although they're not the most accurate guns in the world IIRC they can kill almost anything this side of a Jagdtiger.

And 14" naval guns. The Americans have über units too, just different kinds of über units. My experience when facing Big Cats has been similar to yours. If the map isn't a billiard table they can usually be suckered into exposing a side hull, eventually. But I have to admit that the mere presence of a tank I cant take out from the front can completely alter a gameplan.

All of the above, plus I might insist on a map with few long lines of sight. There's a reason why I used to always choose the British when playing as Allies, at least before the 90mm armed Jackson appears in the Fall.

BTW, years ago when the original rarity system was being discussed for CMBB I argued in favor of a system where rarity would be measured by whether or not the unit would be available for purchase. So in the case of rare units you usually wouldn't even be given the option of buying them (subject to random die roll). That's the only system I can think of that would result in somewhat historical proportionality. To this day I'm not sure why they didn't do this.

I cannot for the life of me find the monthly availability reports for the Western front '44, but I'm fairly certain the number of Panthers and Pz IVs were about equal for that time period. The production numbers you posted are for the chassis. Once you factor out all the Stug IVs and Jagdpanzer IVs there were 3,126 Pz IV tanks produced in '44, 7,394 for the war. That compares to 3,777 Panther tanks in 1944, 6,132 for the whole war. It's been many a year since I played CMx1 PBEMs, but I used the Pz IV almost exclusively when playing as Germans, and with great success, particularly in the early months before Jumbos and Pershings become a possibility. But maybe I was a little lucky. I would like to know the difference between the various rarity settings myself. It does appear from this post that the rarity value of a unit can be much more than it's base price. But I doubt that Panthers will be much affected by rarity in any case, so regardless of how the system works you could resort to the old Fionn's Rules. I know you said you don't like gentleman's agreements, but these worked pretty well back in the day,