Peter Cairns

I read an article a few years back that stated that there was an optimum ratio for length and width of tracked vehicles, which I think was something like 3 to 5. At more than 3 to 5, long narrow tanks tended to have poor turning circles and manouverability, though good traction. wide short tanks on the other hand turned better, but tended to slither at speed, particularly on wet roads, where they could skid on corners. I was wondering is this simulated in CM at the moment or could it be something that could be incorporated into the next CM. It might be done by forcing fast tanks like Hellcats to slow do more when approaching corners on roads, or making Churchhills, less likely to bog down when moving forward or back, but more likely when they turn. Just an idea, what do people think. Peter.

just as we have fanatics in CM, I'd like to see something more variable that went from fanatic to yellow. In the same way that some times you meet units that won't budge even when you are battering them, so to some time the opposition or your own men, crumble at the first shot. By having this AI do this to a limited random extent, then a scenario could be given more depth, if the next time you played it even with the same basic plan, having some units reacting differently in combat could change the whole thing. Having the right flank stall because this time they're nervious, and their opponents harder, means that the natural tendency to "learn" how to win a scenario, might be diminished. Peter.

've always been for a core game engine and models, as I really like the way CM plays, as for me it's the best command game around. real time isn't realistic above first person shooters, and map based sims like TACOps, though it's a great game, don't give you that being their feel. I like modern warfare which for me runs from a bright idea thought up by mister maxim about 100 years ago until today. At the end of the day the lethality of modern artillery arguement can just as well be applied to 1914-18. Trying playing a CM scenario with russian infanty across rough cratered ground with multiple wire trenches and pillboxes, backed by lots of artillery, and you pretty much end up with WW1, Peter.

Starshells and illuminated areas from burning buildings would be good, although the way in which a bright spot both illuminates aroumd it and makes it harder to spot other units because it interfers with night vision could be impossible to model. Muzzleflashes particularly from artillery would also be nice, a bit of a gamey feature rather than for spotting etc. Although at night whether a unit is firing should play a more important role than moving. As to the debate on spotting the suggestion i made some time ago was the option to limit view by unit type, so that for example a sniper could only use 1, ie eyelevel, a squad 1 or 2, a platoon HQ, 1 to 3 etc etc. Finally having spend the last week in Spain it reminded me of the way that european towns differ from the US. When making towns in CM you can't have two large buildings attached on different levels, but in france, you regularly see long continuous streets rise in steps. and curves. Monti Cassino may well be the best example of this where their were lots of long narrow streets on slopes with almost continuous buildings on both sides. Even in major towns and cities like Paris much of the street network looks nothing like the grid you get in CM. I tend to think that the grid system used tends to make towns in particular far to "American" and not realistically "European". Peter.

As far as I know there was no segregation as such in the UK , but as pre war immigration was limited the coloured population was far lower than it is now. Their were Indian units which did serve and the likes of Sikhs, an I think some might have been deployed in North africa, But it's not really my field. I suppose if they were segregated in the US, then the only way to do it would be as a sepereate unit or for someone to model it as a patch. I remember seeing a documentary about Coloured tankers in 1944, and the interview with one of the vets about being taken in by a dutch family. The guy said not only were they greeted as liberators and treated like kings, but it was the first white persons house he'd ever been in, and he wasn't in another for nearly twenty years when he went home. That can't be right given what they were fighting for and against. Peter.

Have I missed domething or are all the americans in combat mission BO to AK white....

In Bungies Myth and Myth2 you got Fear and Loathing, one was a terrain editor the other a unit editor. In CM you get the terrain editor but no unit editor. So what I would like is a unit editor that let you click on a unit when setting up a scenario, and as well as editing things like command, and amo open up the Bitmap and change colour insignia paintwork or whatever. Modellers could still use the same method as usual but it would let the rest of us who have no particular skills do a simplified version Over the years I've produced quite a few fairly accurate models of the terrain around my house, ( I live in the countryside on the Blackisle just outside Inverness in Scotland), but where I have a problem is that I live in a Pink house, so it never really looks right. So being able to just open the closest building a change some windows and colours would be good. If for instance you wanted to create a historical scenario and you had pictures of the actual field, with units etc, then a simple built in unit painter would let anyone add that touch of detail to make it that bit better. It does of course go without saying that someone would pretty quickly start using an army of "Pink Panthers", but well that's life. Peter.

A lot of people over the years have wanted a modern version of CM, but one of the problems with it seems to be the lethality and accuracy of modern weapons, particularly artillery ad airpower. One possible way round this might be a sort of "Combat Team" game, where the basic unit went from a squad of 10 or 12, represented by three figures, to a team of 3 represented by 3 figures. Along with this quarter scale change would be a drop from 20m squares, to 4 or 5m squares with the maximum size of map, 100 x 100, or around 500m. This would very much restrict combat to on board direct fir weapons, although off board could be used and included, but would need to be used very carefully. By keeping the whole thing tight there could be the prospect of a good game that modeled small unit modern combat without it heavy weapons making those on the ground just cannon fodder. Peter.

Given that we are seeing genuine interest from Defence Departments for an accurate turn based simulation for historical scenarios, what kind of demand would there be for a modern day version. I remember this being suggested some time ago and MATT pointing out that the nature of modern combat, particularly the lethality of modern weapons , would make it difficult if not just a poor game. However that was pre Iraq and Afghanistan where it would seem the nature of combat on the ground has very much moved back to focus on infantry with limited support, and away from airpowewr and artillery. Peter.

This might not fit in with this thread but i'll put it in anyway. years back I talked to a guy who was in Korea, serving in a Scottish regiment ( can't remember which). Anyway he was talking about going out on patrol, and that compared to the Americans, they were armed with afraction of what the Yanks had. Howevr after a patrol they would come in and hand back what they had left accounting for what they had used. But time and again the american patrols returned with higher casualties and when asked what had happened replied, "We got chewed up because we ran out of ammo". So if you pardon the inuendo, maybe it's not how much you have but how you use it. Peter.

I don't know if this could be a patch for CMAK but I'd like to be able to lock the camera so that you could only view from above your own units when you toggle through. In addition what height you could see would depend on the unit type and status. So a pinned squad or support weapon might be restricted to 1, while a squad out of command 1 or 2. A company HQ could go all thwe way up to five, but again it would only be able to do so from it's current position. This would stop that paniced MG jeep crew in no mans land acting like a spotter plane. Occationally in small quick battles I play the whole thing with the camera at 1, and it's actually like a whole different game. I think the ability to look over the next hill and work out the ideal route of advance tree clump by tree clump, is one of the least realistic parts of the game. i've lived across the road from a forest for ten years and i can still get disorientated in it, so the units in CM must consist of daniel Boone's...

Of course the other arguement is that reading terrain in the desert is bloddy difficult, I take Bravo Two Zero with a pinch of salt but there are plenty of examples of experienced troops getting cut up because they moved somewhere they thought was safe but wasn't. You seem to be suggesting that the game be fixed so that you can guide units in like cruise missiles and avoid all that grubby messy stuff the infantry on the ground have to face. For me the great thing about CM in general is that it's about here you are this is what you,ve got now get on with it. Peter.

Just a question to start a discussion, How would people feel about future versions of CM allowing for two or more players on the same side, such as US airborne and British tanks, with one player playing each, or four or five players each commanding one Coy of a battalion. Peter,

I don't have any qualifications as such just two years university psychology, but I have been married to an educational psychologist for 17 years as as she spends a fair anoumt of time dealing with " specific learning difficulties" ( dyslexia being part of a group of wider conditions such as dyspraxia). An set of psychometric tests takes on average three to four hours do give an accurate result, so could Mr hedges please let us into the secret of what professional expertise he has that lets him give a diagnosis from a single post. Apologies for the spelling folks, as I happen to be at the mild end of the spectrum, and it's taken me twenty years to get this good. Might I suggest for those who may have a difficulty that they use a Word processor that has a spell checker and then paste in their posts. It doesn't bother me as I have a son with a thing called Friedrichts attaxia which has put him in a wheelchair at 13 and he can hardly even type. Sometimes he posts with mistakes because it takes him aged to correct them and he kind of hopes that people won't mind. But as we can see some people just love to try to prove their superiority by picking on peoples weaknesses. Peter.

The thing with the shotgun pellet depends on "Terminal Velocity""". All objects in air reach a maximum speed depending on shape and weight. That's why you can find mice at mile down a mine shaft. After about 20ft they reach full speed and don't get any faster, but can survive a fall at that speed. Unfortunately people who don't have the benefit of a parachute reach a fire higher speed and tend to splat when they hit the ground. Whether canister would hurt when fired indirectly as discribed would depend on the size shape and composition of the bits. I remember doing calculations on this in Physics at school almost 30 years ago and thinking " What a waste of time who needs to know this"... Peter.

This might be asking far to much but shouldn't the point be to produce an engine that realistically recreates modern combat, rather than simulating a particular theatre. If The far east won't work in CM it sort of suggests that what we take for realism in CMBO and soon CMBB is artifical. If all the balastics personnel vehicles and terrain are realistically modeled then it shouldn't matter where or when you play it it should give realistic results... But then I suspect that like saying if you give someone a scrabble set there's no reason he shouldn't produce what shakespear did. Peter.

You did and I am not, but good luck with the search. Of course the other alternative is that my late father could have been a bigamist with little imagination and had two seperate sons called peter, of which I am only one...... Peter

On this side of the pond, we tend to have to pay higher phone bills so a big down load is a bit of a pain. Also large parts of the UK ( especially Scotland) don't have broadband so it takes an age. Are their any plans for the Demo to be available with any of the MAC format mags in the near future... Peter.

On this side of the pond, we tend to have to pay higher phone bills so a big down load is a bit of a pain. Also large parts of the UK ( especially Scotland) don't have broadband so it takes an age. Are their any plans for the Demo to be available with any of the MAC format mags in the near future... Peter.

This may be daft and I don't know if anyones suggested it before, but with two years till the 60th anniversary of D-Day, would it be possible to build a campaign that involved recreating the whole battle by having players sign up to take on real units on realistically modeled terrain. It would be a huge project, and at say a battalion each you would need a lot of players, but well you have more than 18 months to put it together. Peter.

Can anyone give me some starting tips on how to create new terrain or buildings, I am especially interested in changing existing building skins to look like ones in my area so i can make a map of the land around my house. don't laugh but I actually llive in a "Pink" house ( it was like that when I bought it, and is a local feature over 90 years old so I can't change it). I'd also like to see if I can make taller trees. I don't want to alter game play (and as I understand it you can't do it) but the ones around the local Kirk (Church I am in Scotland) are all broadleaf but about twice the height of the standard CMBO ones. Peter.

I don't know anything about model making, but i have a demo of "Canomeia"??, which allows you to "paste" Photos onto a model to create realistic copies of real buildings. If someone had the full copy and could make it work, they could set up a web site where for a fee they would model peoples homes ( or offices or ex-wives houses) for people to import into CM. Peter.

Are their any plans to put Ski's in the Russian front winter scenarios ? and while I am on has anyone ever done any landing craft or more flexible boat or pontoon barge models. Peter.

I think your right on it as a visual aid rather than a order system. It could perhaps be used as a chart in the main unit info screen or below the main window where fatigue and amo etc is shown at the moment, we could even super impose amo level fatigue and moral on the various segments. Another option might be for it to appear beside a unit when you clicked on it, although like any info the feature could be turned off. Peter.

This is just an idea i'd like peoples opinion on , it's pretty rough but I think it might be worth looking at. I doubt if we would see it in CM2 BB though. The idea is to replace sneak move crawl etc, with a three segment pie chart made up of the three basic elements associated with armour, firepower, mobility and protection. Rather than pick a set comand you would click on a segment and it would expand with the other two diminishing. Thus all move, no fire or protection would be the equivelent of "Fast", while all protection, no fire or move would be "Hide". The three sections would be colour coded and their shade would denote unit status. So if we used Red for "Fire" as a unit expended amo or took casualties or it's moral dropped it would go from Scarlet through orange to yellow. A similiar range for movement could incorporate fatigue. I am not sure if colours should be unit specific,(compared to their peak) or set against some standard level,( a platoon squad would be red, but an HQ only orange because it's got fewer men and less firepower.) My main reason for doing it and thinking it might appeal is that in real life there are a probably an infinate number of different combinations and people might like more flexibility in the orders interface to reflect that. Although you could argue that this would give you a level of precision that field commanders just don't have and you would introduce unrealistic unit performance and move from a command "feel" towards a control type game. In case your wondering I got the idea from looking at a paint colour ring in a "mix your own" machine in a DIY store. Any thoughts welcome