James Crowley

Steve good of you to re-open this "life-line" especially as the last one got side- tracked and mired (please folks, keep to questions and post your opinions elsewhere To what extent, if any, will QB's be enhanced or altered - especially looking around issues of more randomness, greater variety of troop experience levels and types of battle and maps, etc? Can we look forward to the inclusion of the Brummmbar (there were nearly three hundred of 'em!)?

I dont think this has been covered in this or recent allied threads; apologies if it has. The Q.B. Are there any plans to enhance this important area? Specifically: More varied maps (deeper rather than wider; perhaps automatically linked to default timer; deeper map, longer default time etc.) More or complete randomisation (for a greater variety of battle circumstances) Different types of victory criteria ( including exiting units off-board) Possible variations in troop quality (both within troop types i.e. Green infantry regular tankers and within platoons/companies and leaders) Any other improvements/additions that have already been suggested in the past?

I tend to agree with Panzer Leader in regard to the usefulness of tables and ParaBellum in regard to hving a little more background info. CM is first and foremost a game; it is evidently not the real world. It tries to emulate the real-world (and succeeds extremely well for the most part) in the area that it covers but, we as players need to understand ,at least in the broad sense, how this "interpretation" is arrived at. As an example the "Terrain exposure chart" available at CMHQ seems to have been very well received. Using it in no way spoils the play of the game and I would imagine is very helpful to beginners as well as veteran players. It is only info. that has been extrapolated from playing the game; how much better might it have been to have been produced by the makers of the game. I perceive a hedge as giving more cover but less protection than a wall. Does the game ? That is the sort of question that simple charts and tables can provide an answer to and which is quite difficult to evaluate through gameplay because of the many variables involved. I don't think anyone is asking for mathematical formulae or historical commentary, just guidelines. Charts and tables just happen to be a useful and easily digestible way to present that sort of info. I too, hope for a manual that has perhaps just a little more "hard " info and explanations as to why things are done in a certain way. That might tend to cut down questions and queries later on. A case in point is that of grenades. The manual explained why they weren't tracked and while I didn't agree, at least I understood how the game was dealing with that particular issue. As far as I can tell that was never questioned until the dawning of CMBB, when the issued was raised by myself (and quite likely many others) and we now learn that it is being ammended by BTS - bless their cotton socks! Just my thoughts anyway.

Just wondering if anti-tank ditches are going to be included. They featured prominently at Kursk (hundreds of km of them)as well as Moscow '41 and likely many other areas.

I have very sour memories of when Talonsoft (East Front, West Front etc)teamed-up with "european" Empire, which then proceeded to produce a manual (in UK at least) with about three quarters of the content of it's US counterpart. :mad: Also I'm not sure about a manual translated from US English, to French and finally to UK English As to price, in the past I've certainly obtained software from US cheaper than could be obtained here in the UK and rarely had to wait more than a week to ten days. I'll judge the issue when the details are available but I may just stick to ordering direct from BTS as with CMBO.

A possible way of introducing relative spotting (although I don't think It is the way BTS will go) is to ally it to a tighter and, IMO,a more realistic C&C structure. Currently, for instance, a platoon can have its constituent squads spread across the width of the battlefield, divided into half-squads and thus used in a totally ahistoric manner to provide instant recon. of the entire area. Even if none of the squads are in C&C with the platoon leader, the worst penalty is a command delay to the squads in question; almost complete control is still, unrealistically, maintained. When units start to "loose it" under fire etc. the player, in fact starts to lose control anyway. Units can be unpredictable when pinned and when they panic or break all control is, at least temporarily, lost to the player. Why should this not be extended to C&C? Those units not in C&C range cannot be given orders (and will do what comes naturally given the situation i.e. sit tight and shoot back if attacked)and cannot,therefore,report units that only they spot. Those units would remain totally unseen (to all other units other than the spotter)until spotted by another unit etc. At that point the only units that could target the enemy would be dictated, as has been suggested, by the TAC AI. Just a thought>

Jack Arriliac recently posted a perfectly innocent request for some tidbits of info. as to CM2, which he suggested might be published at CMHQ, as the official "unofficial" news site for CM. I thought that was a good idea and backed-up the suggestion. However, because of the time difference between the States and U.K.,I bumped the topic to a time when it was likely to be read. As a result the thread was locked-up by Madmatt, for reasons which are totally beyond me. Madmatt, of course you would post info. if you could. I assumed that you would be under some constraint from BTS and it was to them that my post was directed. I was under the impression that that was the purpose of this forum. If my comments were to have been directed to you personally, I would have contacted you through your site. As it is, a perfectly reasonable request has been treated, not with a reasonable answer but with a big "f..k-off" I've seen all sorts of unpleasant and idiotic threads being rightly locked but never a straight-forward question couched in civilised language. Surely it cannot be that it was bumped - that is happening all the time. This is a case of the consumer making a polite enquiry about an upcoming product and, basically, being treated like a naughty school child. "How dare you ask questions or question the actions of the staff - bugger-off!" A simple explanation as to why this may not be possible would have sufficed. Quite frankly I think the action was totally out of order and boorish

Bump to prime time

Hi, I agree with Jack; would be nice to see at least some reference to CM2, somewhere, anywhere, but where better than CMHQ? I don't think Jack is asking for specifics, stuff that might "guide" the opposition, just maybe a brief outline as to how things are going, from time to time. I can appreciate that all those involved are extremely busy but surely no more so than when CMBO was being developed, and there was plenty of news bouncing around then! It does seem rather curious that there is still no official mention of CM2 being under development on the BTS site; only those who follow the forum would be aware of it and even then offerings have been sparse. It seems a shame that the only really concrete news has been via a "third-party" interview. Come on guys, throw us the odd bone