James Crowley

It is interesting because Holien's successful shots hit my turret front and then the gun mount. To do that they would need to travel very close to the path that my shells took, I would have thought but were obviously unaffected by the branches. I have never seen a tree being denuded of its leaves in such a manner before but because all events in a turn are pre-ordained, the tree appeared bald at the start of the turn and before my first shot actual 'hit' it. Also makes me wonder if, given the height of the impact where the branches would tend to be very thin, little more than twigs, a tree should have that much effect on the fuze of a AT round. As to no form for humour, well; two of my shells have hit a twig and detonated, while my oppos' shells have sailed through, ha ha, bloody ha!

Without the 'engine' there would be no game to play but, equally, without a regular supply of good quality scenarios and campaigns interest would soon wane (look at the CM: Touch forum for example). Would paying experienced designers to produce and test these and then offering them as packs not be a win-win situation for all parties. The designers would have more incentive, other than a few 'thank yous' from grateful users, to put the necessary time and effort into making them. Users would have a continuing supply of material to feed their 'habit' And it would be an additional income stream for BFC. 'Simples'

To date, playing Scottish Corridor (first three battles completed), ranks with the very best experience of playing CM. This may be because I have studied Epsom in some detail, visited and walked a lot of the ground etc. and it captures the mood and elements of that battle and the battlefield brilliantly. It forces you to think and to spend time analysing the terrain and putting together a decent plan. And it can be quite unforgiving should you be careless and/or unlucky. I would love to see BFC commission the talented author to make more of these for inclusion in a 'pack'.

WeGo everytime. With all the complexities in the system, I find the only way I can get a handle on what is happening and why, is to take my time plotting my actions and then analysing the results in replay. My poor old brainbox couldn't cope with doing that in RT. CM probably commands 90% of my overall gaming time, so it is important for me to get the most out of it, both by understanding how it works and by enjoying watching how the action unfolds, in detail. That does eat up time, however and I suppose if you are short of it, or play many other games, RT might be an option. If RT had some sort of rewind facility, then it might become a possibility, at least for very small battles but, until then, it is WeGo all the way.

Steve, no mention here of 'packs' Is there still an intention to have these as part of the overall plan? I would love to see additional 'professionally' made campaigns and scenarios, for instance.

Similarly motivated by curiosity, I tested (briefly) with dense fog and got clear (blue) LoS at up to 357m. I was quite surprised. Also, I agree that the graphical representation is not that profound, on my system at least.

Sorry, that is what I meant. I always play at 'Elite' level, so would imagine it would apply. Just wondered at what level it cut in and thought a line or two in the manual would probably be useful.

As always with a new module, after having checked to see that the download was successful and that the game launched OK, I check the PDF manual to see exactly what has been changed/added to the base game I was surprised to see no mention of the new, more-limited FoW icons which have shown up on the 'Elephant' AAR. Perhaps too late an addition to have been included? Very early, very limited first look at GL. Movie mode is interesting, although I'm not sure it may be a tad too desaturated for my personal preference. Time will tell. Graphics seemed to be marginally improved on my rig, from very good to extremely good. Interesting to see that 'rout' has been removed completely. All such units now surrender. Wonder what prompted that as I cannot recall having seen that raised on the forum previously? Nice selection of scenarios and campaigns to get stuck unto. Thumbs-up for the latest chapter in the CM saga.

Less a flaw, more a fact of life. Making scenarios is complex and time consuming; campaigns much more so. In the 'old' CM1 days you could cobble a scenario together fairly easily; not necessarily a good one but certainly a passable one. But with all the extra work required, particularly around AI, in the more complex and detailed enviroment of CM2, it is little wonder that not many folk have the time or perseverence (or in my case skill) to make new battles. So paying (I presume) the 'experts' to crank some out is realistically the only way to guarantee a flow of good quality scenarios and campaigns. And, of course, we all owe a debt of gratitude to those few, stout individuals who voluntarily put the effort into making, scenarios, campaigns and mods for our favourite game.

Speaking of the 'Pack concept', are there any firm plans for packs yet? I'm thoroughly enjoying the Scottish Corridor campaign and would love to see more of these thoughtful, detailed and excellent campaigns making it into 'packs'.

'Fully solved' is, I agree, highly unlikely. And of course it is a game and, as such, will have inherent limitations on reality. However, moving closer to disallowing players full control of units out of C&C ought, IMO, to be a goal in a 'realism' based game. More importantly, limiting info received from it should also be a goal. Moving from 'borg spotting' to non-borg spotting was an important step in ramping-up reality. It seems a shame that we can't move it up another notch. As I said, I'm not sure how feasible that would be. Just musing.

Is there not a case to be made that a lot of the intelligence being gathered by both sides (and this is a game engine thing, so applicable to all CM players) is being obtained from decidedly un-kosher sources. Bills 'Kublewagen' man is a classic case in point. A lone soldier, a long way from other friendlies, not in C&C, with no radio and no viable way of communicating with his comrades is, non-the-less, providing a lot of vital intelligence which realistically he shouldn't be able to. I do wish there was some way of severely limiting both the orders that can be given to units not in C&C (to the point of not being able to give any) and the information that they can provide to the player in what is, IMO, a completely unrealistic manner. Probably very difficult to do; assuming that there is any desire to do so in the first place.

Yes, the actual bunkers. The crew were killed, it seemed, one at a time as shots 'penetrated'. But I seriously doubt that a wooden bunker could hold up against, what must have been, around a dozen solid hits with 95mm HE. That is enough to knock down a decent sized building.

I have just completed the first mission and can confirm that neither bunker was KO'ed despite multiple hits from both 75 and 95 mm guns. On one bunker, several penetrations and partial penetrations were observed; on the other none. Still got a major victory but was very surprised that the bunkers seemed indestructible.

I have loaded Marco Bergmanns Alternative Sils mod for base game and CW module and everything is working perfectly except for the cal. part which works in neither. The range part is fine. Any ideas?

Hi Georgie The 75mm PAK 40 had a maximum traverse of 45 deg, so to swing it around more than that required the crew to manually shift it the additional 45 deg. Weighing-in at a tad over 3100 pounds that is quite a job for the four man crew (one was firing his machine pistol) who then had to scramble back to aim and get off a shot. All within the minute timeframe of a turn. I can't recall having read anything about this type of situation but that seems a tad overblown to me. I wonder if anyone has access to some anecdotal evidence, one way or the other?

And have been since day one. At the risk of being labelled a CM1 fogey; this aspect was handled much better, especially in the smaller sized battles.

Well, as the recipient of a 75mm AT round up the rear end (of a bren carrier, mind) from Holiens' AT gun, I can certainly say that it had no problem traversing In fact it swung around about 90 deg in around 30 seconds, having been under fire at the start of the turn and having at least one of the AT team returning fire constantly. It also got a first shot hit :confused: Be interesting to see what the author of my misfortune has to say

For those with sufficient interest...... and a big wallet! http://www.casematepublishing.co.uk/title.php?isbn=9780965758499

Excellent idea - some very atmospheric and flavoursome pics.

Thanks - that worked.

How did you get to view them? The link does not appear to be working.

Yes, I have had that and, just as annoying, an SP firing some of its limited AT rounds at PIAT team, even though it had HE. The same SP also fired four AT rounds into a Bren Carrier when, again, it would probably have had a better result with single round of HE.

Do you practice your condescending, superior attitude or does it just come naturally?

No, they are not. Objectives were often given as 'take such and such, town, bridge, crossroads - VLs. And to take them you have to hold them - Occupy. No? I've really no idea what you are trying to say here.