Erwin

It's a good question. I have always used HUNT to enter unknown buildings with a two man scout team. However, I have seen success with simply QUICK moving in as it saves time when you are searching thru lots of empty buildings. When there are enemy in there, you need to use covering/suppressing fire for a minute or two before QUICK moving an assault team in.

Re KAL007. The Malaysian plane was a 777 with flight number 17. Coincidence, or evil SMERSH plot for world domination?

Nice handling of the camera, and in real time too it seems.

By coincidence am reading "Between Giants - Battle for the Baltics" by Prit Buttar. It seems like a really good read to prep for the 1941 version of CM:RT. However, it goes to some length to describe the antipathy between the Germanic Baltic peoples and the population. According to the book, much of the Jewish community welcomed the Russians who invaded as a part of the pact with Germany and consequently were lording it over the Germanic Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. And this "according to the book" is what led to the horrific reprisals when the Germans invaded. Since my family come from that region, I found it fascinating. Only up to about p80 or almost 400 pages. The rest is about the German experience fighting the Russians in this region.

Yes, I saw the first 2 episodes of the 3(?) part series on a plane over the Atlantic. Not as good as Das Boot, but what is? I thought it was quite good. I wish I could find the 3rd episode.

That makes perfect sense Mikey. However, I find myself somehow obligated to recheck every dam move every turn. (No wonder it takes me forever to play a scenario.) I do think that when the action is heavy, a 30 sec WEGO turn would be helpful. But, it would also slow gameplay even more. So, on the whole, not sure if it's a good idea or not.

*******SPOILER********* I wasn't moving the tanks ahead of the inf but close beside, so that (in theory) all inf and armor should be able to fire as soon as a target appears. However, ATG's tend to first make themselves known when a tank blows up. And each ATG was able to KO 2 or 3 tanks before inf and other armor units could locate and kill it. (When I have placed ATG's they were easily spotted and didn't seem to survive long. These ATG's must have been well-placed by the designer as they were hard to spot even after firing 2 or 3 times.) On the other hand the Russian progress has been like a steamroller as the right flank is about 2/3 across the map. However, the Russian casualties may be too high. Time will tell. I feel that that was the "proper/RL" Russian approach. However, I am finding that with CM:RT I am achieving more success with the CMBN/CMFI German/Western Allied approach of splitting inf into teams and scouting and keeping the armor well back. I hope that someone more versed in Soviet tactics can comment. I am not an expert on RL Soviet tactics, but to use the steamroller approach I think that one needs more inf and tanks so that the friendly losses are acceptable. Right about now (25-30 minutes into the scenario I could do with another three tanks and maybe some inf flamer units (or another OT-34), or even something cool like an ISU-152.

You should be able to get the correct dimensions of onscreen units in widescreen. However, you may have to play around with the numbers inside the "display size.txt" file in your main game folder. I think I use "1920 1200 0".

A reason I like WEGO is the challenge of having to issue orders that are good for a whole minute in terms of safety. That tends to take a long time to plot however. Two minutes would be tough, other than maybe after set-up when moving scout units to contact. On the other hand it would be great to be able to choose between 30 secs, 60 secs, 90- secs and 120 secs while in the middle of a WEGO game depending on how much action is going on.

IIRC flavor objects provide nothing other than visual "flavor" and may as well be ignored for all other purposes. If someone here has a definitive answer to the contrary, that would be very interesting.

I quite like the washed out color that you get in this exnt pics!

lowflyer: I get the impression that you are looking for more of a game rather than a simulation. I recommend you try the CM1 series of games which is more "fun" in that respect than CM2 - which I agree is a lot more work and takes a lot more brain power to master (and has many more frustrating elements). There are many clubs in which CM1 games and tournaments are still predominant, and they exist because many people are broadly in agreement with your sentiments and frustration. I find both the CM1 and CM2 game series to be excellent. I enjoy playing each for different reasons, but I burn out on CM2 a lot more often than I burn out on CM1 for the sort of reasons that you outlined. (Nonetheless, after a rest, I always come back.)

Looks fascinating. Thanks.

"...wonder if he will feel the same way in 50 years time when he is a minority in his own native land." My parents were immigrants to the UK (displaced persons from WW2) and I am an immigrant to the US. So, I thoroughly empathize with the problems that immigrants face. But, I agree, when you have wholesale immigration of people who feel they have no reason to integrate, but instead make demands that their adopted country's "native" culture change to accommodate the immigrant culture, there is little difference in effect from a takeover of the existing "native" culture and country. Maybe this is normal when it take hundreds of years. But, with the muslim (and Mexican) phenomena, it is taking a couple of decades. And at that pace it creates serious societal problems that are being papered over. The southern US states, eg California, are almost unrecognizable from 20-30 years ago when I arrived in the US. And the area of London where my mother still lives is already essentially a foreign country. When we in the west go abroad we are admonished to respect the cultural/societal values of the countries we visit. However, there is no quid pro quo regarding respecting cultural or societal values. Um... I suspect this is seriously off-topic. Sorry about that... My mother just got robbed by her Social Services "carer" and it's been impossible to get response from the govt social services or her subcontracted carer company who are the folks we are talking about and they just don't "care". But, when "carers" come from countries where genocide is common and human life not valued, why are we surprised?

The biggest threat to the west isn't violent uprisings in the ME spreading. It is the "virtual invasion" of unrestricted immigration that has brought millions of Muslims to Europe. If you visited recently you'll have experienced large areas that feel like you are already in a Muslim country with women in Burkas and other traditional dress for even the men, no signage in the local national language etc. I was in UK in May and read that the govt had to step in as Islamics had tried to essentially take over school districts (in Birmingham IIRC) and they were promoting their idealogy including supporting Sharia law etc. This pressure on the native Brit culture (of the last few centuries anyhow) is only going to increase. The rest of Europe is also in deep doo doo with this issue.

It's a really good scenario. I think I shall try and soldier on and see what I can accomplish, and report back. *****SPOILERS****** I thought I was following Soviet doctrine by putting just about everything in the front line and overwhelming the enemy units. This sort of worked as the inf did a great job, but the tanks were very vulnerable to hidden ATG's. And since I play WEGO, I could lose a platoon in one turn. If I was to replay this, I think I would set-up and start exactly the same. However, on the right flank where I had nine T-34's and the OT-34, I would have crossed at the ford but then held maybe two tank platoons back in safety while I used the infantry to scout forward thru the woods to the right of the buildings and victory locations supported by one platoon of tanks. When enemy positions had been identified I would use the onmap 81mm to KO ATG's and bring up tanks or the OT-34 to kill enemy infantry. I would only bring up tanks from the two reserve armor platoons to replace tanks losses. And keeping the smg units for assault when one really needs their inf firepower. Not sure what to do about the HMG's on this flank. So far they haven't been of any use due to the short range of engagements which favor the smg's. They may be of more use on the left flank hill (as will the ATG - Inshallah). But, I have yet to check LOS from the hill-woods edge. Looking forward to getting back to this next week.

Wow... that list is impressive. Any chance for bodies (perhaps burning) that could be placed over windows, vehicles etc? (Can tanks hide in the haystacks??)

Apparently "refurbished" means that the M1's had their special armor removed so they are more vulnerable to ATGM's. However, since many were hit from the side, it does appear that M1's are no longer the invulnerable beasts they were reputed to be.

My point was that there are aspects of CM2 that are very detailed and others are glossed over. So we have this detail that surrendered troops can pick up their weapons and fight again - which I think is a bit of a dumb (as JonS would say) detail. I think "when they surrender they are out of battle even if rescued" as in CM1 would be fine. Currently, it's just one more ultra detail that doesn't contribute anything to the fun of the game. If it's "realistic" then why not have the other realistic features I mentioned? I really hope that BF didn't put work into the surrender mechanism. My hope BF can focus more on making the game easier and quicker to play - eg: work on revamping the ACQUIRE system to make it more user friendly, and also selectable waypoints. Btw: I regularly have enemy surrendering in my games. Am I playing it wrong?

I was thinking that there needs to be a similar level of abstraction across the whole game. So, having some aspects very abstracted and other made "overly realistic" throws the game off-balance. I thought the CM1 system worked well in that respect. If the CM2 game is making distinctions about whether or not surrendering troops are disarmed or not, then why not allow POW's to be shot (as in real life), or why not have medics and make that a sub-game, or how about guarding POW's in rear area stockades etc etc?

IIRC in CM1 POW's could also be rescued by friendlies. But, they returned without their weapons and so could not fight. Seems like we need something similar for CM2.

******SPOILERS******** Even tho' I don't have the time needed to do this scenario justice, I so wanted to play snake eye's latest masterpiece that I just had to fire it up yesterday. Got about 25 minutes into the mission so far (ELITE / WEGO). Superb map and very intriguing challenges that drew me in in right away. What makes a great scenario are the interesting decisions one faces. I left most of the set-up alone. I decided to send 9 tanks plus the OT and one inf platoon and the smg platoon and 3 HMG's along the Russian right flank to the ford crossing. (Covered by a smoke barrage from the the big offmap arty. It covered from the road to the right edge of the map). The other three T-34's and SPG's and two info platoon and engineers went to the left edge to attack the hill along with all but 3 HMG's. Mortars were deployed in the rear SET UP area. I set the offmap 81mm to barrage the front line of the woods I front of the hill with a 15 minute delay so I could cease fire em if there was nothing there. Waited a turn and saw the enemy barrages come down. The right hand side barrage stopped and there was enough smoke so all nine tanks (plus OT 34) rolled towards the ford and I got all tanks and all inf across the ford with no casualties. (A later enemy barrage dropped some short rounds that did a little damage and so did the minefields there.) (Since engineers don't clear mines, I find them of little use in that capacity so decided to deploy them to the left flank as it looked like we could be fighting our way thru larger buildings in the map center.) Around this time, the barrage on my left map edge flank stopped and I sent inf across the open ground towards the hill. Finding no opposition, the rest of the force followed to the trees. While the inf probed the trees, the AC probed the road finding sounds of en enemy tank. I made the error of sending a tank up the road. One was damaged by mines, another got killed. I compounded the error by sending another two T-34's to try and kill the enemy tank, but it killed both. I then sent my two reserve T-34's (Co and Bn HQ) to this flank. The infantry here did better and found the enemy trench and defensive positions with some losses. The FO was able to adjust fire and find a LOS line directly over the enemy trench. (It's a little gamey. But doing this brings down the set-up phase arty in the same time as the prep fire was scheduled for but on a new position.) It was dangerously close range, but by hiding my men they suffered few friendly fire casualties. and the offboard 81m was allowed to use up all ammo on this line. With the inf on the left of the road and the engineers and HMG's on the right heading towards the woods edge overlooking the village, the tank was overwhelmed by inf fire and the hill was taken at the cost of two T-34's and maybe 10-12 inf (and all of the offboard 81mm). Too high. My time was limited and I was rushing. On the right flank, the nine tanks and OT-34, ground forward following the inf that rushed ahead. I tried to keep to the RHS of the line of woods assuming that it would shield them from fire. However, I made the error of letting three tanks go towards the road. They were all killed by at AT gun. That gun also killed the OT-34 that I thought was safe in the rear. A serious bummer. The other tanks killed the gun b4 I could get the FO there bring down any onmap 81mm. The infantry moving forward en mass, did a good job clearing out enemy inf. However, more armor following two closely amongst the buildings got killed by a 2nd gun and a Stug. Have made it halfway along village via the treeline along the RHS map. Am trying to get into the enemy rear rather than trying to take victory locations. Have killed many enemy inf at the cost of maybe half my inf force here. But, have only one functioning T-34 left on this flank. Another tank is abandoned but the crew are cowards and will not recover and return to their tank. So with only about 25 minutes played, not sure if I have enough to continue esp if there is an enemy counterattack coming. My inf are rolling over the enemy inf. They are almost at the "Northern" VL of the village. But, the enemy tanks and AT guns have almost wiped out my tank force. My main problem was lack of RL time and so I was impatient and tried to move too quickly. I have yet to use any on-map mortars, or find a use for my AT gun, or engineers, and I have plenty of big arty ammo. One of the hardest challenges I find with almost all CM2 games is time management - gauging how much time one needs to accomplish objectives. I always feel like I have too little time, but it's not true. Stopping and sitting around for 5-10+ minutes in WEGO while arty is called down is so boring, and so I am always tempted to keep going regardless. I will probably try and continue another time as am not sure if this scenario is replayable once one knows the designer tricks. Really fun challenges. Great job, snake...

It's imposing rulers that we like and the locals hate that breeds foreign adventures. The reality is that we (in the west) cannot impose rule over these places. The Romans imposed Roman Peace, by killing everybody. Can't do that these days. All succeeding empires also failed. They need to sort this stuff out themselves. And if that means they end up with internal war, that will keep them distracted.

"I also run a small business..." CM is a cult-like religion. We are its followers.

Hey... no spoilers please!!!! At least label your post ***SPOILER***.