Blackcat

Mr. Kettler, It isn't just you, I had similar experiences when reading Ken Tout's work. He has a great stories to tell, he just doesn't tell them very well. That said it is in my view well worth persevering because he does do detail from the sharp end and you can get a very good idea of what life and combat was like for a Brit tanker in 1944. If you want a change, and an easier read, but on similar themes I recommend "Armoured Guardsmen" by Robert Boscawen published by Pen and Sword Books (ISBN 0 85052 748-1). This gives the view of a young officer in Guards Armoured from end of June '44 through till May '45, including taking part in XXX Corps' drive on Arnhem. P.S. You said, "Mr. Tout", I think you should have said Dr. Tout. Post-war he continued his education and became a noted Gerontologist.

If I was one of the denizens of the thread that must not be named I would make a reply to the effect that knowing now that you have spent most of your life looking at the sky explains many of your posts over the years. However, as I am not one of the said denizens I shall make no such comment. I look forward to seeing, next summer, the sun rising in the Northern half of the sky.

"Should the game compute LOS based on the main weapon or the unit as a whole?" Mr. Flaming Picky would like to point out that the LOS in the game works pretty well. Its the LOF that causes problems and frustration. I have had MGs, AT guns, mortars and tanks with bright, solid lines of sight but when the enemy appeared could not actually fire. What has driven me up the wall on many occasions is that there is no way of actually knowing one has a problem in advance. Only when the enemy appears does one find out that and often by that time it is too late. If BF are going to do something about this, and I hope they do, then some indication the LOF from the main weapon is blocked would be the best way forward. On a related note could the MG deployment bug, as demonstrated on a recent AAR, be fixed as a matter of priority, please. For an MG team to rock up behind some bocage and deploy in such a manner as that the supporting players can fire through but the actual MG itself can't is, frankly, pretty pathetic.

My oppo and I did War in the East twice. The first attempt we ran out of time, what with having to learn the rules and so forth. Cracked it on the second attempt (though we dropped the optional partisan production spirals as I recall). It took a full 2 week leave, playing about 12 hours a day, mind you. The next leave we played Wellington's Victory, the SPI monster game of Waterloo. It took a full day to just do the initial set up. Playing as the Brits I gave him a jolly good spanking. There was a rule where retreating units would/could throw those behind into disorder, and possible rout, and I managed to use this to good effect when smashing his version of D'Erlon's attack. One of the high points of my gaming career, as witnessed by the fact that I can remember it so vividly damn near forty years later. CMBO, for all its faults, killed my interest in cardboard games stone dead. A sad muppet of 67 by the way. My son, who played his first CMx1 TCP/IP* against me at the age of about 8 and is still an avid player of CMBN but not a follower of these forums, is now aged 20. *TCP/IP WEGO the best thing that happened to wargaming in my lifetime and BF threw it away.

You lying git, Para!

Brighton, as a very mature student. Drove me up the wall with all the PC bull and neo-marxist clap-trap. I put up with it because I wanted the ticket but I can't say it helped much in practice. I lasted two terms in the public sector, too much process and too little concern for education. I know how you feel, it is much nicer when you stop banging your head against the wall. Agreed, as I have said elsewhere, in my view CM doesn't really work too well in an urban environment.

Mr. Vark, Yes, I can defend myself when I need to and with regard to what I said above I don't think I need to. I wouldn't dream of condemning all teachers as bloody useless, process-driven, ideological menaces to the mental well-being of their charges. However, a sufficient number of them are just that and having done a PGCE myself I can see where they get it from. As you say contemporary English society as espoused by our trendy politicians (i.e. all life styles are equally valid, prizes for all etc etc) don't help and they must shoulder their share of the blame. Nonetheless, wherever the balance of blame lies, the net effect is, as you have noted, that the "standard of education has weakened". I'd say it has fecking collapsed, but let us not split hairs. When you have a situation in which an eighteen year old who cannot string three coherent sentences together gains enough credits to get into a university, if only a fourth rate ex-poly and to do a degree in Medieval Pottery and Flower Arranging, something has gone seriously wrong. Mr Erwin's comment, "I fear that the rigid class system I grew up in is coming back with a vengeance and the corruption/degradation of our educational system is the prime mover." is hard to disagree with, save that I would say the class system had largely gone when I was at school and merit was the key. It is now the wealth of ones parents that has made a massive comeback in determining outcomes. Anyway, before I get banned for all this politics let me say I am very much looking forward to the Market Garden Module. I have never really got on with the Italian Campaign.

"I fear that the rigid class system I grew up in is coming back with a vengeance and the corruption/degradation of our educational system is the prime mover." We are getting awfully close to the banned subject of politics here but I have to agree. In fact in the UK, social mobility (in terms of people from poor or poorish back grounds moving up) has basically stopped. The prime cause of this has been the collapse of the education system into a mish-mash of "progressive" propaganda, teachers focused on meeting targets through box-ticking process and a prizes for all mentality (as if a A level in "Media-studies" could be worth the same as one in Physics). The root cause of much of this nonsense was the lunatic idea by a certain politician that 50% of UK youth could benefit from a university education, which led to nonsense degrees being introduced by fourth rate former technical colleges and fees being introduced (currently £9,000 pa). Years ago an American correspondent of mine sent me the following joke: An engineering graduate asks, "What happened with that?" A mathematics graduate asks, "Why did that happen?" A liberal arts graduate asks, "Do you want fires with that?"

"... airborne radios had failed in every previous British drop, and no one was surprised when they failed this time, too." That pretty much sums up the UK Army's attitude to comms. Nobody is surprised when they don't work but bash on regardless. Nothing much changes. Clansman was an unreliable crock of **** and Bowman (developed at the cost of billions and over decades don't seem much better). In Bosnia in the 1990s there were numerous instance of units relying on the civvie mobile phones because it was more reliable and more secure than their own radios. In Iraq (2003 - 2006) there were multiple comms failures - at one point a company in action, and deep ****, had to use a satellite phone to call the MoD in London and ask to be patched through to their own battalion HQ a few miles up the road. As for Afghanistan, read any book written from the infantry end, even the Apaches, and you'll find numerous instances where the radios just failed to work. Bad/unworkable communications for the British army is just normal. Its a bit like the regimental system - it should mean the whole thing breaks down, but somehow it works and works very well, nobody knows how.

"If you're looking for a big scenario, give "Carbide Carbide" try" Wholly agree with that suggestion. "Carbide, Carbide" is one of the best scenarios I have played in Combat Mission through all its iterations. I also agree with Mr. Martyr's suggest that set up on the attack need not be to onerous. Get down to ground level and have a good look at the terrain, work out a rough plan of attack and which units will be responsible for which parts of it - recce, mainforce, diversionary attack (if any) and reserve and group them in the set up areas accordingly. C3K did a superb AAR over on the Normandy thread a few weeks ago, in which he set out his thought processes for an attack, well worth a read (as is just about anything he posts, even if just for the laughs).

For various reasons I couldn't go this year and I am seriously envious of you. I hope you have a great time, I am sure you will.

Jaeger Jonzo If you get a chance that museum, though small, is well worth a visit. As indeed are many of the small privately owned museums scattered throughout the combat zone. Is this your first trip to the Normandy battlefields? If so I recommend thorough planning beforehand; there is just so much to see that without a good plan you'll run out of time. I'd also recommend taking along some of the modern books on individual actions that you are interested in. The Battleground Europe series published by Pen and Sword books are excellent, they are small, cheap, contain detailed descriptions and, crucially good maps showing positions and movements of the troops. With them you can stand on a position (e.g. Hill 112) and gain a much better understanding of what you are looking at and what happened there. I am sure you'll enjoy Normandy, its a wonderful part of the world, the people are friendly, the food is good - especially if you avoid the main tourist traps - and the local booze is well worth the drinking (Normandy cider has no equal, but can be very strong).

Really? I must have missed that announcement. However without replay I can't see much point to such a feature. I suppose it will make some people happy, whether enough people to make the development effort worthwhile I don't know. Presumably Battlefront do and it's their game and their money so I'll shut up about it.

"When new people come in and ask for the same or similar features I think that sends a good message to BFC - the features are wanted" Well, if we are to be allowed or even encouraged to repeat earlier feature requests, may I put in a plug for a long wished for multi-player item? I know WEGO over TCP/IP is never going to happen for CM2, that was made very clear a long time ago. However, a replay feature for RT has been mooted and it seems it might be possible. So replay for RT multi-player with an automatic pause every, say, 60 seconds would be wonderful.

"Hedge just in front of the house maybe?" No, a nice clear line of fire into the side wall of the house. After maybe eight rounds the lower side wall of the house came down, but the rest of the structure remained intact. I put another four rounds into the building, with no obvious effect but I thought that the squad I knew was inside would be at least seriously suppressed if not eliminated. So I switched the tank to light fire and sent in my infantry section under cover of its MG. I was a bit miffed when the defenders opened up catching my chaps in the open. It may well have been a fluke, as you say, but since I upgraded to 2.01 buildings do seem a lot tougher, and provide better cover, than they used to.

fabiovir, I don't know if it is caused by a bug but in my experience such behaviour is not unusual. What I have also seen on many occasions is that although the bunker never shows as destroyed its crew are killed by a few penetrating shots. Of course, with FOW the only way to find out if the bunker is still operational is to give it a target and see what happens. On a similar note, recent changes seem to have made buildings much stronger than they used to be. In one recent game I put a dozen 95mm HE rounds from a Churchill into a farmhouse type building, not only did the building stay up but the squad inside was still able to engage and mow down the infantry unit I sent forward to take possession.

Welcome to the forum, Mr. H.. The fellows who post here tend, on the whole, to be a good bit older than is probably the norm on a game forum. This means they are also a bit politer than you may be used to; bad language is rarely seen and even most insults are thoughtful and commonly funny. However, some of the chaps are now so old that they can be a bit cranky at times and get forgetful, so you might need to be patient sometimes. Just stay away from any thread that contains the word "Peng" in its header and you should be OK.

So true. So, so true. Of course, what PeterH is well on his way to is years of shouting at his screen in frustration, ignoring his nearest and dearest for hours and hours and going to bed very late with consequent sleep deprivation effects the next day. But CM is a great hobby.

Each to their own Mr. Beast, personally I have struggled to get into the Italian Campaign and enjoy CMBN far more than CMFI. There are, I agree, some seriously annoying niggles in the game-play when it comes to setting up MGs and the like behind bocage (as a recent AAR posted on here demonstrated), but into every life a little rain must fall. Against that there are some superb campaigns and scenarios for CMBN (step forward for a bow the designers, especially Paper Tiger and George MC, whose work is particularly outstanding). Furthermore, with Commonwealth module it is possible to play without encountering much in the way of bocage at all. Frankly, when it comes to assaulting across open fields, a la Hill 112, or the bocage, I'll take the hedgerows any day. As I say, each to their own.

That was an incredible shot. If I recall the shooter was the sole survivor of an infantry squad that got shot up in the first few turns, so I am assuming he wasn't a marksman and was not equipped with a 'scope on his rifle. To pull off a one round head-shot using iron sights against a moving target at what looks like a range of several hundred yards is amazing. I don't think I have ever seen the like in all the years I have been playing CM. You could probably replay that turn a thousand times and never get the same result.

"It's the only war gaming company with an entire forum (not this one) dedicated to slamming, deprecating or dismissing their products" Crumbs are that bunch still going? Very sad if they are, I feel sorry for them. Anyway, I registered and did my duty by putting the ticks in the required boxes.

Ah, that would be telling and I'd hate to spoil the story for you. The book can be yours for less than $10 and it is a cracking read.

Mr. Sublime, Fraser didn't use the PIAT against Japanese tanks, but against boats, or to be precise a boat. I am sure you'll enjoy the book.

A quick aside: if you haven't read George McDonald Fraser's "Quartered Safe Out Here" linked to by JonS I really do recommend that you do so. It is one of the best narratives of war at the level of the private soldier you will ever come across. The campaign he talks about is Burma in '45, but the truths he expresses are universal and, as regards the British Army, in my experience, eternal. It also contains a good description of the use of a PIAT in action, which contradicts many of the things that have been said about the use of that weapon on these forums over the years.

Mr. Emrys, once again you are correct, and, as I said at the time, I deplore your decision to remove your old signature line. You should restore it so that it can act as a beacon of hope for those who, for sensible reasons, dare to think of crossing the orthodoxy of the CM forums.