Greg Deych

Besides the armor penetration of the 152mm round, you have to consider the blast effects. Even in the beginning of the war, German artillery was able to score kills on T34s and KV-1s by literally dislodging the turret from the hull. A 152mm or 122mm HE round would definitely be capable of doing that to a Tiger or a Panther, even if it didn't penetrate the armor as such. Oh and about the Ferdinands...unless it's a official battle assessment (and maybe not even then), it's very likely to be another, more common type of Assault Gun. After the Kursk, Ferdinand quickly became the "Tiger" of German AGs, basically any turretless vehicle could be reported as a Ferdinand.

Could you give us ISBNs for all those, please?

It's kind of interesting, because I've just came back from a vacation where I hung out with my grandfather quite a bit. And what stories he told me... Grandfather was an member of the underground Communist party in the independent Latvia in the 30s. So, when Germans invaded he, being an ideologicaly aware individual, headed for the nearest recruiting center and joined the army. He was commanding a section of anti-tank rifles for the first few months of the war in the 201st Latvian rifle division. The stories he tells of those few first months are hair-raising. In the winter of 41 they were in the 2nd echelon of the offensive, and were separated from supply for near 2 weeks: no food, no bullets, nothing...just advancing over this burnt out and cratered landscape. Then there was the time when he was present as the battalion commander ordered attack on a hill without any recon...which turned out to be held by our own guys. A bunch of whom got killed by artillery and machine gun fire. The same winter, in the same offensive he and two other guys got separated from their platoon. They lay down to sleep and when they woke up they found Germans were only about a hundred yards off and their own lines about the same in the other direction. To get to their own lines, they had to cross a clearing, and they decided to do it in a dead run. My grandfather was the fastest, and made it clean. The second fastest guy was wounded by a machine gun bullet, and the third guy got killed. Sometime in January, he got wounded by a shell fragment and was sent to a hospital. From there, he was selected to go to artillery school and commanded a mortar platoon and later mortar company, got wounded two more times. He went the whole war, from 41 to 45, began a rifleman and ended a Captain.

Russian engineering/assault troops did have a sort of a scale plate jacket issued to them, at least occasionally. I don't remember exactly where I've read this, but I did see a picture of it. No idea if it was really issued in numbers, or just an experiment.

Speaking of eastern front partisans. I've recently learned that most of them were created from NKVD troops as the regular army retreated out of the area. Oftentimes, they grew by accumulating soldiers and civilians who joined afterwards, which caused some organizational problems, since the later arrivals were usually not as disciplined and organized as original contingent.

Did he at least get a chance to drink the beer?

Fionn, I'm rather bothered by the invocation of Lady Luck that seems to crop up so often. If I wanted to pursue her favors, I'd play Tournamet Cribbage or something. To put it bluntly, what sort of tactics can one apply to the game if 50% of the time things go one way, and 50% they go the other way? I'm certainly aware that I'm hyperbolising, but I think Steve and Charles ought to tone down Ye Olde Randome Numbers Generator.

Have you guys (BTS) decided what method of shipping you are using, UPS or USPS? I'm going to be gone out of town untill mid January, and I'd rather not get my shiny CM box get returned back. With USPS I can put a hold on deliveries, but not with UPS...

It's in Russian, Fionn. As far as I know Babelfish doesn't do Russian-Anything translations yet, but the url is: http://www.roline.ru/sp/sof/0598/02.rhtml

The things I've heard suggest that the company may have been trying to extricate some other unit from ambush. If that is the case,I can definitely see the commander not wanting to feed another unit into the ambush. If this happened like I imagine it did (at night, ambush, in the middle of a square), the soldiers probably got pinned in the middle of a very nicely designed killing zone. Other then not getting there in the first place, even a special forces unit would have a hard time extricating itself from that. Combine this with quality of Russian troops, and you have a disaster on your hands. I've been reading a first hand account of an ambush of a supply column by Chechens in 1996 in Russian edition of Soldier of Fortune, and it's a pretty harrowing thing. The key point comes at the end: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>As the guys from the 324th regiment told us later, when they reported that the supply column is getting trashed in the mountain pass, they were told to sit tight. The help arrived two and a half hours later, when it was already too late.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'm going to include a link to the diagram of the ambush, because it's was very nicely done. If you ever get a chance to pull off something like this in CM, your opponent will be screaming bloody murder. [This message has been edited by Greg Deych (edited 12-20-99).]

I'm a little concerned about this, actually. If you look at the board collectively, a few people are posting that they encountered strange results. Sure, all low probabilities event have to happen eventually but they seem to happen a wee bit too often for my taste.

Interesting, I had a completely differeint reaction to the original situation. Unless Tigers are able to engage M1 from the rear, they are toast. Given that any impact from the 120mm is a kill against a KT and M1A1 is proof against the 88L71(except for rear, I suppose) ... I can't see how it would go any other way.

I think maybe it would be a nice idea to implement a Hull Down , and combine it with the LoS tool. You'd give the tank the Hull Down order, and then use the LoS tool to point to exactly the point you want it to be Hull Down with respect to.

No, I'm not on drugs. Just hear me out. I've recently learned about a new Dreamcast game, called Panzer Front. I haven't found a lot about it, besides 2 40-second movies. It appears somewhat similar to Panzer Elite in theme, though I can't say anything about realism, POV etc. etc. But, anyway, to bring it back to CM. Steve, Charles, you are always saying that current PCs don't have enough graphical oomph to make CM as pretty as you would like. How about porting it to Dreamcast? If there is a machine that can do it, that's it. Now, I have absolutely no clue about how console development functions...does anybody here? Do you need to pay Sega royalties, or up front costs or something? Anyway, I thought I'd run the idea by you.

All right, Hawk, here they are. I couldn't find an English translation, so I took it upon myself to make the best of it. I hope a little bit of the original comes through. The Holy War Arise, the great country, arise for deadly fight With fascist force of darkness, the fascist horde of blight Allow the righteous fury explode up like a wave The people's war is raging In holy war engaged. Allow the righteous fury explode up like a wave The people's war is raging In holy war engaged. Repulse all those who stifle the fire of our dreams. The rapists and looters, the torturers and fiends. Allow the righteous fury explode up like a wave The people's war is raging In holy war engaged. The sky over the Motherland is free of their black wings They are forever banned From tromping in her fields Allow the righteous fury explode up like a wave The people's war is raging In holy war engaged. The rotting fascist devilry gets bullet in the head From all of humanity, a coffin for a bed Allow the righteous fury explode up like a wave The people's war is raging In holy war engaged.

Hawk, I'll do my best to find the lyrics. The recording on the site is not very clear, so I can make out only two stances fully. But, we shall hope for the best.

I was actually born in fUSSR, and lived there for a slightly more then half my life. I'm not exactly sure when I got interested in WWII history, though of course general awareness of WWII history is a lot higher in Russia then in America. I guess I'm still more interested in EF stuff, because it's just that much closer to home. *chuckle* So, Steve and Charles, if you need an intro track(which I believe is in public domain) to CM2 , I got a great one for you. http://www.dol.ru/users/hotdog/war.ram

I know Steve and Charles are not going to let us examine their checkbooks *grin*, but let's throw some numbers around. With the market being what it is, they could be pulling in anywhere from $60K-100K+ by working for somebody else. They've been working on this for 2 years, which comes off to around $300K in lost wages. For CM to compensate them for it, they would need to sell anywhere from 6000-10000 copies, depending on what their exact costs for manufacturing, advertising and other associated overhead are. Is it doable? I'd like to think so. Like they said, by controlling all stages of the distribution process they can potentially survive off a much smaller volume then other games, which would need to sell many tens of thousands of copies to be sucessfull.

I've noticed in one of the TGN night screenshots there was a building on fire. It did not seem like it was adding any light to the surrounding scene. Now, I remember there being a discussion on this in the past, but I'll be darn if I can remember what the consensus was: Do burning building light up the area, or do they make everything else that much darker by contrast?

On the other hand, I had a Stug survive a penetrating top armor hit, and nail the Sherman that did it. Let me tell, that was a big surprise for me. I heard the big *CLANG*, saw the message and prepared to luxiriate in the knowledge that I've just made the world a little safer for the democracy. Instead that SOB returned fire. Argh!

That's a damn gorgious picture, Moon. *sigh* Is your build better graphically then the beta we have?

i740, with 8MB of RAM. Even so I'd say hike up the minimum to 16...I've wanted an excuse to buy a new card anyway!

That brings up a point I was wondering about..let's say you're advancing under enemy fire (not charging with bayonets,mind you, a few hundred meters away). Is it better to run or walk? To a certain degree, I'm visually disturbed by the figures advancing unflinchingly. When they are suppressed (and thus go down), I subconciously think it's a good thing, as they are taking cover.

You know,there is really no need why this has to be limited to either "Hill X near Village Y" or "WWII-1939 to 1945".

Amen to the church steeples idea. Great for the FOs and sharpshooters, and of course instantly shelled by the OPFOR for exactly that reason Fionn: That's not a minaret. Minarets are skinny tall things. I'm sure there is a technical architectural term for them in Russian, but colloqually they are called towers.