John O'Reilly

TRL, I have played Desperate Measures as the Germans and had a similar experience to yourself. I am waiting to try it vs the AI as the Russians before reviewing it since I too was amazed by my Panthers power. It came out as total victory for the Germans. Since I know how dangerous those Panthers are I have several ideas as the Russians as to how to deal with them. I appreviate Rune's frustration at the reviews in the Depot. A scenario may list "best played as attacker vs AI" and "play second as attacker vs AI" and you will still find, I'm sorry to call them this, but knuckle dragging morons who will play as the defender and then whine when the AI cannot put up a fight! Fine, it is possible to make a mistake (although if playing against the AI 99% of the time it should be as attacker) and play the wrong side, especially if the designer does not list which side is best played in the briefing . Having done that it is best NOT to review the scenario at all or switch sides and try it as it was intended, John

I remember this being discussed as something that would be fixed but I do not see it in the Readme. It is late though and I am tired, can someone please enlighten me? Thanks for your efforts lads! John

No worries Andreas, these things will happen. As I noted in my short report I had enjoyed it immensely up to this point. In fact, having just finished the scenario I don't think the reinforcements are needed at all, at least not against the AI. I will post a review at the depot since I think this is the ideal battle for Newbies to CMBB to begin with. It breaks them in more gently than say, "Cemetary Hill" Will you be fixing the reinforcement bug and reposting the scenario? Thanks for all your efforts as ever, John

This post is replete with spoliers so anyone who hasn't played this scenario should stop reading now. ***********SPOLIERS*************** I downloaded the pack last night and decided I would try something small before going off to bed. This seemed to fit the bill nicely although I was doubtful that it would recreate the atmosphere of the likes of "Red Barricades" from ASL. Well I was wrong since immediately upon getting down to eye level on this small but interesting map I was immersed! Interesting forces for the Russians and cunning plan was formulated. It went off real well and as an aside to whiners elsewhere I had a platoon advance (squad by squad) across a street into rubble on the other side under fire. They all made it and I suffered one casualty. My LMGs started suppressing Germans bold enough to pop their heads up. My SMG armed lads made short work of the Germans in the rubble. In short, except for losing my tank in an overly ambitious movement things were going swimmingly. About half-way through the reinforcements show up, not sure that they are needed but happy to have them. Problem is that they appear all over the place but mostly in the road between me and the factory! There was one squad that "appeared" adjacent to a suppressed German squad. Stealth technology? I must say it is very silly and my immersion was shattered. I have the game saved at this point should anyone (designer) want to see it. John

Andreas, I'm a bit confused by your reaction to reviews for your "Into the east" which you seem to have selected as an example of how difficult it is to please people when it comes to balanced play. On the depot there are 26 reviews of which, by quick count, only 4 are negative. The rest are not just positive but glowingly so. I must admit that, for myself I prefer "historical" scenarios above all else, I don't mind force imbalance at all so long as it is not glaring. It will always come down to the reading of terrain and the formulation of cunning plans in the end,.... John

My very own "effect"! And to think they said I would never go anywhere,.....lol. By the way, TRL, I might start another thread on the apparent inebriated condition of my Tiger crews in a certain PBEM we are playing John

It was an armoured CA and frankly I have seen this in several different situations. I will actually see the enemy tank appear and watch it stop and start to target my own. Now, since I have no other unit in the area that can spot the enemy tank, surely this means that it is my own tank with CA that has spotted him? If so, then why does he take so long to target? John

I have but a modicum of experience with CMBB so I am just throwing out this observation from the first three PBEM games that I have started. I was very keen to try out the new commands and in particular the CA command. I have noticed, in conditions where my tank is stationary, unbuttoned, in ambush position with a CA, that every single time an enemy tank hoves into view, it is the enemy tank that targets first. A bit strange no? I have just reviewed a PBEM file where my vereran Tiger is fired on by a moving T34/85 that it was waiting to ambush. Luckily the Russian missed and my Tiger didn't with the return shot. I have equally noticed this while playing the Russians, driving around in Shermans. Am I doing something wrong? If I continue to see CAs giving this effect I may stop using them. That first shot is critical, John

Has anyone noticed that Ruleset 550 for the "Hills are alive" on CMHQ only contains a Readme file and no actual ruleset? Anyone know where I can get it? Cheers, John

Will most of the scenarios be playable on mid-range machines (800 MHz) with decent RAM and G-card? I have found that the large city battles can cause considerable slow-down. Thanks for your efforts regardless, John

Very nice, I have to say, winter uniforms are for me the most anticipated mods. It just looks downright wierd to see regular uniforms on the chaps blundering through a blizzard!

Just for the record, I went back and recorded a major victory as the Soviets in "Directive Number 3". **SPOILERS** - - - - - - - - - - Knowing how much I would come up against helped. Knowing the AI would desperately counterattack the Plough factory was the major part of my strategy. If you hide all of your armour behind the smaller factory, the panzers are forced to engage you at shorter ranges. I knocked out all but one German tank, took all flags and caused horrendous infantry casualties. All in all a good day. What amazed me though was that, even under the favourable conditions that I selected my T34s suffered any number of turret penetrations. Now I know the M40 model has a weak turret but the panzers seemed to pick this spot with uncanny accuracy. Do tanks actually aim for specific parts? I always thought it was relatively randomly determined what part was hit. I have the game saved if anyone is interested. The thing is though, as much as I enjoyed seeing my strategy succeed, I know that it would have been completely different against a human opponent. I suppose this scenario is simply best played against the AI, John

Sorry CMPlayer, I should have been more specific. I am thinking of scenarios such as "Directive Number 3" and "Cemetary Hill", John

I have noticed several threads bemoaning the difficulties facing the attack in the new CMBB universe. I'm not going to rehash them here as I think this game will have to be extensively played before anything approaching a definitive judgement can be made. There is no doubt that it is different from CMBO. I took up the challenge to try "Directive number 3" as I had seen that several posters considered it impossible to win as the Russians. Without posting any spoilers I gave a detailed account of how the battle went until the halfway point in another thread. It was very much going my way until I decided to go toe to toe with the German armour (not having previous experience with the relative strengths). I will try it again forewarned and have an idea that I think will give me a victory. My prolem is that it is unlikely that I would have thought of this new plan in the first place. Put simply, I think that in all of the CMBO scenarios that I played there were several viable strategies that might lead to success while it strikes me that in the scenarios that are attracting most attention from people regarding the difficulty of overcoming the defense seem to have a single "magical" solution or are inclined that way. While this might provide an interesting puzzle I must confess that it is not really all that appealing to me. This generally arises due to force imbalance btw. Just wondering what people's thoughts are on this, John [ October 18, 2002, 07:55 AM: Message edited by: John O'Reilly ]

Eden, I found another method that might be useful. I positioned all of my dinky little AT guns at the woods edge to begin with. I used one a turn to keep the KV buttoned. When the 88s arrived I gave an "advance to contact" order to their carriers. Since the KV was under fire from all 4 AT guns it was permanently buttoned and couldn't spot the carriers/guns. I then gave orders to the 88s to unlimber and having done this they promptly dispatched the beast. End result, no German tanks lost, John

A very interesting and important topic I think. After reading several posters belief that "Directive Number 3" is simply impossible to win I decided to give it a whirl last night. I should note that I have also done this with scenarios such as "Jagermeister" and "Cemetary Hill". In both of these I have found them winnable as the attacker but with methods very different to CMBO days. So, on to Directive number 3 ******SPOLIERS****** - - - - - - - - - - - Ok ,perhaps forwarned that this was going to be tough I decided on the cautious approach. I put two of my infantry platoons over in the wooded area bordering the village with the idea of both scouting it out and eventually advancing along the wooded ridge to the outskirts of the town. I also had one of the armoured cars there. In the hope of shooting up Germans routing from the factory I placed my sole Maxim in the small brush area just before this wooded ridge. My two mortars were also on this ridge. My final platoon I deployed in brush just in font of the depression in the terrain with the soft ground. That is with the factory between them and the town. They advanced into this depression and snuk up the other side into some more brush and waited. I kept my armour in four platoons with the T34s essentially out of sight but easily moved into action. I didn't want them wasting any ammo. The others I deployed on the other side of the railway tracks, again with the factory between them and the village. Now the single best thing about these dinky tanks is their ammo loadout, it is huge! My plan was to blow up the areas of the factory that I wanted to advance my single infantry platoon towards, hopefully revealing a few badguys in the process and then to deal with them and place a couple of platoons into the open ground where my infantry would advance. So how did it work? Well the German arty ca,e down or turn one and had any of my infantry remained in their starting positions they would have been hammered. As it was I only lost one tank to an unlucky hit. The factory came down and Germans that popped up were dealt with. Those who ran away were killed by the maxim. My BTs moved in and suppressed those remaining, taking a few hits but, no bother. My infantry got into the factory on, I think turn 10 with neither a hit nor damaged morale. One AT gun that reared it's head dispatched (eventually) a BT5 but I use my mortars to knock it out in turn. My infantry warned me that the panzers were coming and I moved up my T34s to await them. They are now engaged and two German tanks are burning. My infantry are advancing along the ridge. I am feeling confident and have just ordered all of my small tanks to show themselves and engage the Germans also. I know this last move is risky since I have no experience with these tanks and I don't know how they will fare vs Pz III's etc. I had to stop at this point as my wife came out of bed to explain that boys shouldn't be awake 'til 1:30 am on a worknight! She just doesn't understand,......I will have to wait until tonight to see how my heroes do. Goes to show though that even BTs have there uses, John

**Cemetary hill SPOILERS** - - - - - - - - - - - - - Just finished a playing of Cemetary Hill and having read a few other posts I see that I didn't do too bad pulling off a draw. In fact I thought I was in a position to win, with 5 squads closing on the church on turn 20. Strangely the AI then decided that both sides had accepted a ceasefire! I must have hit the hotkey combination by accident!?!?!? My global morale was on 65% at the time and that of the Russians about 50%. Anyway, to the case in point, when I encountered the wooden bunker flanking any approach on the church I immediately advanced the halftrack (carrying a flamethrower) to a position behind the bunker. Having see that there was noone behind I ordered the flamer to disembark. I couldn't give a target order but assumed he would target automatically. Unfortunately this didn't happen and I had to wait another turn to manually target it. At the same time I had given the halftrack orders to move back to the action. What happened next was bizarre! After the flamers second "shot" the bunker erupted in a huge explosion not only taking the halftrack with it but brewing it up too! Remanents of Mr flamer ran off the map. All in all I was less than impressed I suppose exploding bunkers is not THAT unusual under the circumstances only I never saw it in CMBO. Is it now likely to happen? Perhaps cost me the win! John [ October 12, 2002, 03:22 AM: Message edited by: John O'Reilly ]

Ah go on!

Just wondering if any kind-hearted grog-type would be willing to purchase and ship a copy of CMBB on behalf of a poor old Irishman stuck in France? If so please reply promtly to JohnORei@netscape.net and I will send payment. Thanks in advance

This thread reminds me of a question that occured to me some time ago, namely whether the game will be available to purchase online for European customers with shipping from Ireland? They did this with Airborne Assault and, living in France it was great to receive the game a few short days after placing the order. There is also the question of whether CDV will be selling the sanitised (all references to "SS" removed) version or not? Living in France but prefering an English manual, does this force me to order from the US? John

Almost finished this one as the Germans and what an experience! Pz IVs (and indeed IIIs) finally deserving of the title "armoured". Things actually bounce off 'em and not just MGs from the front! The penetration details are superb, I have lost only 2 tanks by turn 35 but some of my Pz IIIs must look like swiss cheese by now! *spoiler alert* When first I looked at this one, in CMBO mode I thought it was going to be nigh on impossible. I'm too used to seeing such tanks smoked by AT guns when forced to attack over such ground. I set my IVs up on the central ridge immediately in advance of the starting perimeter as an overwatch group while moving 5 IIIs up each flank. It was superb to see shells missing my IIIs as they advanced, finally scoring hits and still the gun unidentified (extreme FOW). Of course the range was the principle factor here and eventually the guns would show up to be pulverised my massed fire. At one point I had a "battleline" of 10 tanks along a ridge which opened up on one AT gun. It was spectacular to say the least to watch this "broadside" with all the new fire and smoke jobbies. When the first KV1 reared it's head I had 12 tanks popping away at it. I got one partial penetration I think before it was immobilised. Next turn the hammering continued since I wanted to see if they would bail as I had read once happened. They did!!!! The second KV I advanced about the same number of tanks at. It was hiding on a reverse slope. As my boys moved forward it too advanced. I have never seen anything like it in CM before. It advanced into a wall of my armour and started to move along the length of it at point blank, shells ricocheting off all over the place. Finally a IV parked one up it's jacksey and that was the end of that. Going back now to see what is in store for the last 10 turns. Me a very happy camper, John

Oops, sorry, suitably chastised

Excellent work Madmatt et al, no where can I find those CMMOS compatible Axis uniform mods?

Actually, regarding hull down, I seem to be reasonably proficient at getting into position using MkI eyeball also but then my tanks demonstrate comparable proficiency in getting themselves killed in said position. What exactly is the effect of hull down status? When I see "55% to hit, target hull down" does it mean that the chance to hit has been reduced to 55% by virtue of my hull down status or that in fact the probability is smaller? Thanks, John

Any way they could be made CMMOS compatable?