James Crowley

I found the BBC series to be rather good. It certainly was not highly fictionalised. In fact it follows Ben Macintyres book pretty closely. Most of the major incidents and raids are portrayed much as they happened; indeed some have been slightly downplayed as it was felt that they would be too unbelievable. Sure, there is some dramatisation - its a TV series; what do you expect? Could have done without the totally fictional love interest and some of the timelines are a bit wonky. The music? .......depends on personal taste. But it captures the wild nature of the formation of the unit and does a pretty good job of capturing the personalities of the main (real) characters. And it was never meant to be a documentary.

Excellent war film on a subject that gets little attention. High production values and well edited; a strong and believable story set in a factual battle, with impressive battle scenes. Recommended.

For what it's worth, I think that improving the force selection process in QBs would go a long way to increasing the mileage that can be obtained from the huge amount of material and content that we already have available. I find the whole process of generating a battle that has a decent match-up of forces is just massively frustrating and one of the prime reasons that I frequently stop playing CM. I don't like having to pick the forces myself, as that ruins the FoW and uncertainty factors and feel that, with a computer simulation, I really shouldn't have to. If force selection really worked properly I would be quite happy playing QBs until the cows came home and not overly concerned with new modules and packs coming out quickly. But that's just me.

So, looking on the bright side, two months down and only three to go. Don't know what's worse; the groundhog day that is the pandemic or waiting for this module to appear.

Thanks everyone. The keys worked and I repeated the same process for CMFI, which also worked. Just got to download Final Blitzkrieg 4.0 upgrade and that's the whole set back up again. Cheers!

Thanks for that. I have tried the 'activate new products' using the 4.0 and 3.0 keys but no luck. I suppose I will have to do this product by product now (oh! for a Steam installation) Should I install them as per your list, starting with the 3.0 upgrade. As an after thought, I purchased CMBN when it first came out and for some reason it does not appear in my account. I think there might have been another account at the time, when there was a major change to the website but the details are lost in the mists of time. I do have the keys for everything on your list.

New computer and no problem using the all-in for Red Thunder. Haven't tried FI or FB yet. For BN, it goes through the process, seems to be loading all the modules and pack but, on launch, does not ask for an activation code but produces the latest 4.03 version of the game but without any of the modules or pack installed (although there are separate downloads of all the manuals). Uninstalled and tried again but the same result. Any help would be appreciated.

Actually, I think that is exactly what he was saying. The tankers would pick a Pershing, the commanders would say "nope, don't have any of those; have a Sherman M4A3E8, got plenty of them."

Steven Zaloga's book Armored Champion, does a very good analysis in regard to the 'best' tanks of WW2, on a front/year basis. Armored Champion: The Top Tanks of World War II: Amazon.co.uk: Steven Zalgoa: 9780811714372: Books He uses two broad based benchmarks, the tankers choice and the commanders choice. The first one is the holy trinity of protection, firepower and mobility. The second is more around cost and maintenance. His choices for summer 1944 are; tanker's, Tiger; commanders, T34/85 For wars end 1945, M26 Pershing and the M4A3E8+

You are correct in that the scenarios and campaigns in CM are essentially hypothetical. They are, however, and no matter how loosely, based on real and factual events. Such events can be studied in great detail through a huge amount of written material, placing those hypothetical scenarios into the reality of history. The cold war battles, as per the CM title, didn't happen. Anything that is available to read about them is hypothetical. There is no historical reality backing them up and, therefore, they are essentially science fiction. Yes, they might have happened as might a lot of things; perhaps space lobsters of doom! I'm not knocking the Cold War battles; I know a lot of folk really like the subject and to each their own. But, for me at least, they are not on a par with battles based on historical reality. And, documentaries tend to display the 'truth' that the documentary makers want to be displayed.

Thanks guys. Tried various combos of the above but no luck. We agreed on a ceasefire, which my oppo processed, so the game is over now (it was a draw). Maybe a one-off glitch.

Thank God! At 69 I'm not the oldest member on the forum.

Playing a QB by email and progressing without any problems until I receive file 069 from opponent. I play the turn but when I finish, I get a red box error message saying: Email Save Failed. QB070 could not be created in Outgoing email directory. Opponent tested the file (069) and it processed normally for him, producing a 070 file. Very odd.

In the book, Sherman Firefly by Mark Hayward (Barbarossa Books) this photo is captioned: A Firefly of an unknown unit, 1st January 1945, in a photograph taken by Sergeant Smith in Germany (probably Gangelt). Gangelt is about 8 km west of Geilenkirchen, north of Aachen. Tank Museum 2996/D5

I agree with you that CM "historical" scenarios are, at best, a close approximation, although a lot of **** happens to me when I play them! I just like the fact that you can "measure", so to speak, historically based scenarios by reading up on them. Something you can't do with scenarios that never happened.

Interesting that there seems to be greater support for science-fictiony, it-never- actualy-happened stuff rather than historical based scenarios.

Oh yes! Although I believe it is currently billed as Steel Tigers. Steel Panthers, when it first came out, was without peer. And it was originally supposed to have a we-go option which, sadly was dropped. Maybe the new iteration will be we-go; I really hope so.

The caption says that the tanks come from the 709th Tank Battalion which was supporting the 75th Division during the Colmar fighting.

Same here.

Salerno by Eric Morris; Hutchinson & Co 1983 Anzio 44: an unexpected fury by Peter Verney; B T Batsford Ltd 1978 Both books are very readable; bring the action down to detailed tactical level and have numerous first-hand accounts as well as black and white maps.

I'm sure you are right and I will be looking forward to them but it would be good to see the new features, especially the AI routines, applied to new or revised scenarios for BN and FB.

Seems unlikely given the short time that ver.4 has been available but if you know of one I'd be grateful for a pointer to where it is. I wonder if you are thinking of the new 'Finnish' campaign - that was finished in Ver.4 but has none of the new features included.

There is, AFAIK, only one ver. 4.0 scenario currently available; Mark Ezra's excellent Last Defence. Is there a decent likelihood of ver. 4.0 scenario packs appearing for the five CM families? If so, and I certainly hope so, then can they please have the maximum number of AI plans built into them, as Mark has done with his, to add maximum replay value to them.

Currently have this fired up and really enjoying it. POTENTIAL SPOILERS The ford on the extreme left flank, from the US perspective, seems a little, well, deep. I was surprised to see a whole squad and a Hellcat happily crossing - totally underwater! Pretty sure that they didn't have frogman kit.

Sadly that is the effect that it is having on me. Anything larger than a Tiny or Small battle and I break out in a cold sweat. So much micro-management required to get things to happen as you would want. And, if you are playing H to H against a half-decent player, you have to do that if you want a chance of winning. At least playing against the AI is a bit easier, as it isn't trying to be 'clever' and often delivers an opponent that exhibits behaviour closer to the reality of combat that I have read about.